After El Bucho
by Lily in Blue
Summary: Season 3 AU. After team Bartowski is torn apart by serious injury and a sequence of disasters, Sarah Walker is forced into a war on two fronts: against The Ring and against herself.
1. Prologue

**Summary: **After grievous injury and a rapid sequence of disasters, team Bartowski is forced apart and Sarah enters a war on two fronts: against The Ring and against herself.

**Author's Note: The following season 3 AU story spawns from a "rearrangement" of the sequence of events in the season three premiere, "Chuck vs. the Pink Slip." What if Chuck had lasted a little while longer in spy training before being handed the titular pink slip? What if Chuck hadn't been there to interfere with the operation at El Bucho?**

**(Insert standard disclaimer about not owning 'Chuck' here.)  
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><p><em>Chuck, it's your sister again. Please, please call me back as soon as you get this. Or- or text me. Anything. Just please let me know you're okay.<em>

_Are you still in Europe? I know you're maybe keeping your phone off. I know the international rates can be terrible. I… I thought you might have come home early. Call me. This is important. I'll even pay your bill if you need me to…_

_Chuck. I'm sorry for leaving so many messages. I just really need to talk to you. There's something really strange going on around here. I don't know what to make of it… and, and no one will tell me anything. I'm scared and I'm worried. Where are you? Please, just call me back._

_Chuck? I… I just really need to hear your voice right now. Call me. Please._

_Chuck… th-they told me I couldn't say anything… that I shouldn't tell you, but I'm just really scared right now and I don't think they can hear me. Please, please, please call me. It's Sarah. She's… I have to go. Call me._

**xxx**_  
><em>

**Day 1**

**Casa Bartowski, Echo Park, CA**

Somewhere in the past two years, Chuck Bartowski realized that he didn't particularly like whiskey. Previous to this period of his life, few occasions ever rose where whiskey became an issue. During this period of his life, he drank more of it than the previous twenty seven years of his life combined… and he hated it. It was still a relative rarity, but rare was still more than never. The complex blend of flavors that he didn't have the palette to discern meant nothing to him. To Chuck, it simply tasted like burning pain. Casey introduced him to this vile stuff. Black label for the normal bad stuff, blue label for the really bad stuff. Chuck knew Casey drank the Johnnie Walker to numb the pain and blur the particulars of his sins. He didn't want numbing and blurring for himself, however. He thought the burn might be a decent punishment for his mistakes.

Blindly slapping his hand across the coffee table, Chuck's hand nearly knocked the bottle over as he groped to find his glass from his splayed position on the couch. He steadied the bottle and settled for grabbing it instead. Chuck sat up and took a long swig from the bottle of black label. He held it in his mouth for a moment as he lowered the bottle.

"Chuck?"

The door to the apartment slammed open. Chuck started out of drowning his sorrows, spluttering, choking and spraying a mouthful of Johnnie Walker Black across the coffee table. Ellie Bartowski charged through the doorway, crossing her living room in a rush to haul her brother to his feet and envelop him in a vise-like bearhug.

"Oh my god, you're okay," the tears began welling in Ellie's eyes as she clung to Chuck's shoulders. "You're okay, you're okay…"

Chuck blinked several times in hazy confusion. "I uh… I came back early. I uh…"

Ellie sniffed and caught a strong whiff of alcohol, then her demeanor changed before Chuck could formulate a coherent response. She shoved him out of the hug, punching him in the shoulder in the same motion. Chuck's inebriated state caused him to stumble backwards and land seated on the couch again.

"You've just been sitting here drinking?" Ellie grabbed the whiskey bottle off of the coffee table and stared at it in shock. "Half the bottle? It's not even seven in the morning. Chuck? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I uh…" Chuck started lamely. "It's much later in Prague?"

"Chuck!" tears shone more brightly in Ellie's eyes, threatening to finally spill over. "Why didn't you answer your phone? I've been calling and calling… I thought you might have been hurt or-or arrested… or dead."

"Wha- why?" Chuck grabbed his phone from the table, fumbling with it as he turned it back on. "Twenty eight missed calls…" Chuck slowly lifted his gaze to meet his older sister's watery eyes. "Ellie, what's wrong?"

"You really don't know what's been going on?" Ellie cautiously ventured.

Chuck merely shook his head in response. "I just got here from the airport an hour ago…" He buried his face in his hands for a moment, futilely attempting to quell the whiskey's effect on his brain. With a heavy sigh, the vaguely-slurred outpour began. "I came back early because I messed up. I blew it, Ellie." He meant that in more ways than one, and he desperately wished he could explain that to his sister. Over the past two and a half years, his skills had lying and otherwise obfuscating the truth had grown. Nevertheless, alcohol had a way of loosening most untrained tongues. "I failed..." Chuck frowned, taking a brief moment to rein in what he nearly said; he failed at becoming a real spy and General Beckman sent him home with a proverbial pink slip and a bleak outlook for his future. "...and I think I lost Sarah... the girl of my dreams, and it's all my fault."

"Chuck..."

"I thought I was making the right choice and that she'd see that... but god, Ellie, I really hurt her. I never imagined I was even capable of doing that to her..."

"_Chuck..._" An edge was starting to creep into Ellie's voice as she attempting to interrupt her brother again.

"She's not answering my calls or returning any messages. I don't even know where she is... probably somewhere exotic like Caracas or... or Jakarta... or..."

Ellie's frustration with Chuck's rambling finally reached its peak. "Chuck!" she exclaimed sharply, "Shut up!"

Chuck's mouth snapped shut mid-sentence and he stared at his sister for a moment. She almost never spoke to him like that. Finally, he began to see past his own worries and remember the frazzled state Ellie was in. In a softer tone than before, he simply asked, "What is it, Ellie?"

"Sarah's here, Chuck." Ellie suddenly felt as if she had been hit by a wall of exhaustion. She sunk down into the couch next to Chuck, finally succumbing to the stress and lack of sleep. Her voice took on a distinct weariness as finally gave her brother the vital secret she had been holding onto for hours. "She's at the hospital. Someone shot her last night."

**xxx**

Chuck was on his feet in the space of a heartbeat, causing his head to swim. "What? Last night? How could you wait so long to tell me, Ellie?"

"I _tried_, Chuck!" she snapped. "Your phone?"

He paused for a moment until Ellie's point processed through his brain. "I-I'm sorry. You're right. God, oh-god-oh-god-oh-god this is all my fault... Just tell me, Ellie. Is she okay?"

Chuck's question went unanswered. Instead, Ellie just looked at him for a moment. She had so many questions that she was desperate to ask him, but she hardly knew where to begin. However she was nearly sure of one thing: Chuck could fill in all of the blanks about this mystery woman that up until eight hours ago Ellie thought was nothing more than her brother's sweet, shy girlfriend.

"Ellie," Chuck pleaded, not able to cope with even a moment of silence from her, "Tell me Sarah's okay."

Ellie sighed and regarded her panicking brother with a grave gaze. "I can't, Chuck. I'm not going to lie to you. It's... it's bad."

Chuck froze in place, mentally turning Ellie's words over and over until they finally sunk in. _It's bad... It's bad... It's BAD! _He snapped into a state of scattered panic. "Oh god. I have to get to the hospital..." He spun away from Ellie and the couch, tripping over the coffee table in the process. Ellie jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm, steadying him again. Chuck attempted to pull away from her, but Ellie merely tightened her grip. "Ellie," he pleaded, "I need to see Sarah. There's so much I need to say to her..."

Ellie stepped in front of her brother, grabbing his other arm too. She gave his upper arms a quick squeeze, though she wasn't sure whether the gesture was one of intended comfort or her own frustration leaking out again. She pushed her own emotions down for a moment and replaced them with all of the clinical rationality she could muster, "Chuck. I need you to listen to me." Chuck regarded her with a wide-eyed stare, desperation still very evident in his brown eyes. "You have been drinking. I can't bring you to the hospital like this."

"But it's Sarah..."

"And she has been in surgery all night. I don't know if she's officially out of the OR yet, but Devon is with her. Ok?" Ellie could feel some of the tension dissipate from Chuck's arms when she mentioned the name of her husband. "She's not alone. John Casey has been hovering over her like a stubborn guard dog." Staring into his eyes, Ellie searched her brother's face for some reaction to Casey's name. She wasn't sure what to think when he didn't seem to have one. Nevertheless, she continued speaking with deliberate calm. "She's going to be in recovery for a long time. It's going to be hours before you're allowed anywhere near her."

With a step backwards, Chuck pulled himself out of Ellie's hold on his arms. He could feel his own self-control slipping, "I have to go to her, Ellie!" he demanded. "I can't just sit here and wait while she's hurt." He turned to head for the front door.

"Chuck, please!" Ellie's clinical tone dissipated as her desperation began to match that of her panicking brother. "Just listen to me. Please." She only finished her sentence in her head: _Because I am so tired and I can't handle you right now._ Chuck turned to face her with his hand on the doorknob. "You can't see her right now and you can't see her like this. We have time. Go take a shower and sober up a bit. I'll make some coffee, ok?"

Releasing his hold on the doorknob, Chuck nodded and gave a sigh of defeat. "I'm sorry," was all he murmured as he trudged towards the bathroom, trying not to trip over his feet as he went.

Ellie pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and glanced at it as she headed for the kitchen. Her brow knitted in worry over the lack of updates from Devon, but she gave herself a tired reminder. "No news is good news." She could hear the water turn on in the bathroom as she pulled the coffee and filters out of the cabinet. She let out a deep breath as she sought out the empty coffee pot. She had endless questions rolling over and over in her head. Something was terribly wrong, something far more than what met the eye, but no one would explain. Why was the Westside Medical Center ER swarming with federal agents? What did Sarah Walker have to do with them? Why was she with John Casey? What was Chuck's role in this mess? However, in seeing her little brother in the state that he was, she couldn't bring herself to ask anything. Not yet. Answers could wait.

After filling the pot with water she paused and listened. Ellie realized she could hear the distinct sound of retching through that of the running water. She cringed.

Unexpectedly, her cringe suddenly turned into a single sob. What was left of her calm shattered and all of the exhaustion, stress, frustration and fear she accumulated over night hit her at once. At that moment, all thoughts of coffee left her head and Eleanor Woodcomb leaned heavily over the kitchen sink and finally, after eight hours of holding back, began to cry.

**xxx**

_To Be Continued..._


	2. Five Seconds

**Author's Note: **Thank you for all of the encouragement in your reviews on the prologue. This chapter took a little longer to finish than I hoped, but I hope it doesn't disappoint.

**(Insert standard disclaimer about me still not owning "Chuck" here.)**

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><p><em>Eight and a Half Hours Ago...<em>

**Day 0**

**El Bucho, Los Angeles, CA**

Everything was over in five seconds.

Moments earlier, Colonel John Casey of the NSA stood behind a bar, absently drying one glass after another. While his hands were busied with that menial task, his eyes were on another: watching and waiting. He was waiting for a courier, and the courier was late.

Six months ago, the fight against Fulcrum for the intersect all but ended. Chuck Bartowski, Casey's protected asset, had the intersect data removed from his mind thus allowing Casey to leave behind the most annoying two years of his life. Reunited with his squad of Marines, Casey jetted off to the war zone of his dreams when his plans for the immediate future took a sharp turn sideways. A final confrontation against Fulcrum's last standing gave rise to awareness of another bogeyman within the global espionage community: The Ring. Though knowledge of their aims and plans could only be described as nebulous to the NSA and CIA, rumblings in espionage circles quickly asserted the Ring as a dire, if not vague, threat. The only known element was that Fulcrum answered to the Ring, even if many within Fulcrum did not realize it for themselves.

On the very same night of the Ring's emergence, Chuck downloaded a new, more powerful version of the intersect thus bestowing the hapless computer nerd with fresh intel and a seemingly endless list of new skills. The Intersect 2.0, kung-fu included, was not intended for an untrained civilian such as Chuck. Recognizing this odd combination of potential for both good and sheer disaster, the commanding officer in charge of their entire operation, USAF General Diane Beckman, stole Chuck away for intensive spy training in the Czech republic within the space of a week.

Casey delivered Chuck to the airport alongside his CIA partner, Sarah Walker. That was the last he heard of Chuck. Then, he abandoned his war zone dreams indefinitely as he and Sarah set to work on their new assignment: uncovering The Ring. Though it was far from ideal, Casey knew the situation could be worse. Bartowski may have grown on him in the past two years, but Casey welcomed the return to pure professionalism that Bartowski's absence allowed. He had an enemy to fight, a top-notch partner to do it with and no nerds to babysit in the process. It wasn't so bad at all.

He thought it curious, when three weeks later, Sarah disappeared without a word. He suspected it had to do with Bartowski and he half hoped that Sarah wasn't doing anything foolish. His curiosity increased when she reappeared a scant three days later, seemingly a changed woman: she had turned cold.

The change intrigued Casey. He was a spy. Spies were naturally curious. However, he admired the tireless gusto with which Sarah immersed herself in their hunt for any intel on the Ring. He wouldn't dare complain. After three months of searching, they finally found a hit: a black market dealer with the odd mix of French and Colombian ties known to most only as Gilles. Money originating from all over South America funnelled through Gilles' operation on its way to the Ring and they began spinning a large-scale plan to infiltrate his operation and open a back door to the Ring.

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><p><em>Casey gave Sarah a sidelong glance as she examined her own countenance in one of the surveillance van's mirrors. He couldn't deny it, his partner was dressed to kill tonight. Her golden hair fell in the kind of loose, seemingly-effortless waves that Casey recently learned took well over an hour to create. Smoky eyes and glossy lips only added to the look all built around a daring dress in a rich claret red. <em>

"_You sure you're good with this?"_

_She kept examining her face in the mirror, as if searching for the kind of slight imperfections that only a woman could recognize. Finally after a moment of delay, she responded, but her eyes never left the mirror. "Yeah."_

_Three weeks ago, they discovered Gilles' operation. Tonight, they were making their move: infiltration via seduction. Walker was about to embark on a potentially long-term honey trap with calm, focused acceptance. Casey expected her to be more bothered by the mission parameters. Instead, she volunteered to be the bait before she even had to be given orders. _

_Casey could play with fire with the best of them, and he knew he was doing that right now. "At least this should go nice and smooth without Bartowski around to try to mark his territory in the middle of your op," Casey needled her. It wasn't entirely an untruthful remark, however. Sarah's last two attempts at seduction, Lon Kirk and Cole Barker, both turned complicated partially due to Chuck's jealousy. Mostly, he just wanted to stoke a reaction to figure out where his partner's head was._

_The temperature in the van seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant. Sarah snapped the mirror closed and shot her partner an icy blue glare. She refused to dignify Casey's remark with a response. All she gave was a curt declaration of, "I'm ready."_

_Sarah exited the big black van and her personality immediately shifted. The cold professional disappeared and the coy temptress took her place. Her stiletto heels clicked against the pavement as she approached the trendy nightclub's entrance. She surpassed the line of people waiting to gain entrance the way only an astoundingly beautiful woman could, leaving behind nothing but a wink and a smile for the grinning bouncer._

_Once Sarah was inside, leaving behind a queue of miffed club goers, Casey turned his attention to the feeds from the club's own surveillance cameras. It didn't take long. Sarah found her mark and with a moment of eye contact and a shy smile from across the room, she won the game before Gilles even knew he was playing._

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><p>Weeks passed quickly and Sarah played her role to perfection, giving just enough to keep Gilles interested and playing hard enough to get to keep him addicted. Gilles had a taste for beautiful woman, thus the addition of a pretty new face amongst his entourage hardly gave any of his associates pause. Plans and deals were discussed over dinner, with drinks and by the side of the pool in a blend of Spanish and French. Sarah was never far away, always feigning disinterest. None of them ever suspected that Gilles' new blond arm candy was highly multi-lingual.<p>

After ten weeks of clubbing, dancing, lounging by the pool and eavesdropping, Sarah and Casey's efforts were finally coming to fruition with the assistance of over thirty additional CIA and NSA agents. The restaurant and club, El Bucho, was littered with undercover personnel. Twenty two lay in wait on the inside, posing as waitstaff, bartenders, bouncers and patrons. Five additional teams of two manned the perimeter from the outside. They were waiting for a courier by the name of Javier Cruz who was expected to deliver a thumb drive full of names and account numbers for numerous Ring associates to Gilles. Sarah planned on ending her evening by breaking off her whirlwind "romance" with Gilles from the confines of a Castle interrogation cell.

To all of the civilians in El Bucho, being unaware of the hidden CIA/NSA task force, it seemed like a normal Friday night in Los Angeles.

No one thought it odd when a mustached guitar player approached the entrance. The harried stage manager grabbed his elbow and dragged him towards the stage with an accusation of tardiness. The agents masquerading as bouncers simply kept watching the door. The mustached man climbed onto the stage and placed his guitar case on the ground. They keyboard player looked up from his sheet music and gave the guitarist an odd look, "Hey. Where's Manny?" No one else noticed.

The mustached guitar player ignored the question and scrutinized his audience. His eyes settled on a dark-haired man accompanied by a blond in a purple dress for a fleeting moment before he bent over to open his case. The keyboard player, a civilian, saw it first. The case did not contain a guitar, but an MK5 in its stead. He jumped to his feet with a surprised but nonspecific yelp.

Twenty two pairs of trained eyes looked up at the sudden noise from the stage, but none of them spotted the true cause. Sensing his time was up and his cover was blown, Javier Cruz shed his guise as a member of the band and whipped the sub-machine gun from the guitar case and opened fire at his target with a single move.

Every agent knew that gunfire had a way of making time seem to slow down, however no one in El Bucho could react fast enough.

The agents and civilians in the room immediately distinguished themselves. The civilians reacted with fear and dove for the ground or the door with the opening roar of the MK5. Every agent in the room went for his or her own gun and dropped to a firing position, ready to face it head on.

Cruz unloaded his weapon in an arc across the room, starting with his sights on his primary target at the back: Gilles. Sarah's rational mind all but disappeared and her finely-honed instincts took over. At first glimpse of Cruz's weapon, she jumped from her seat at a table and dove for Gilles. He may have been a mark, but if he died all of their work would be for naught. He had to be protected. Sarah moved exceptionally fast, but even she could not race speeding bullets. Before she could fully rise to her feet, a red bloom erupted from Gilles forehead. A second appeared in his neck almost instantly.

Sarah never saw it. She just felt a sharp burn between her ribs and the hardness of the floor as the impact of a bullet slammed her harshly backwards

A hail of bullets emanating from Cruz's gun sprayed across the rest of the room, creating a swath of destruction. Agent and civilian alike fell under the fire. Splinters of tile and wood exploded forth as the bullets shredded the decor, creating brightly-colored shrapnel. Glassware exploded off of tabletops and bars, adding a rain of razor-like shards to the dangers.

Casey ducked beneath the bar, not-quite avoiding a shower of broken glass. He stayed hidden for a heartbeat before rising to his feet and firing his own weapon back at the man on the stage. Gunfire burst forth from all over the restaurant as agent reacted to the assault and began to return fire. Wiithin moments bullet wound after bullet wound spout forth trails of red from Cruz's chest and head. His MK5 fell silent and he wobbled before pitching forwards off the stage and hitting the ground with a sickening thud.

"_Cease fire! Cease fire!"_ Casey roared from behind the bar.

The entire room froze. Casey's ears rang with a high-pitched whine - the residual result of at least 160 decibels of concentrated gunfire. For a moment, he could hear nothing but his own breathing and the ringing. Every still-standing agent held their firing positions with their guns drawn, no one yet convinced that the threat had passed. The paralysis of shell-shock caught most of the civilians.

No one moved. No one spoke.

Everything was over. It took five seconds.

A brunette agent near the stage suddenly rushed to Cruz's body and pried the MK5 from his hands. As dictated by procedure, she automatically removed its clip and handed it off to her partner. A terrified sob from a waitress amidst demolished dining tables suddenly pierced the silence.

As if someone removed their finger from the pause button and hit fast-forward, the stillness of the room evaporated and everything exploded into a blend of chaos and organized action. Panicked patrons attempted to run for the exits, each to be intercepted by able agents. "_No one move. No one move! Federal agents. The situation is under control!" _Civilian and agent alike moved to tend to the numerous wounded. Instructions and reports began flowing in over the radio, all echoing in the hidden earpieces worn by all thirty two agents in the El Bucho operation.

_Shots fired. Repeat, shots fired._

_Secure the perimeter. No one in, no one out._

_Exit Alpha secure._

_Exit Bravo secure._

_Monitoring local emergency channels. Intercepting._

_Exit Charlie secure._

_Rerouting 911 system._

_LAPD may already be en route._

_Preparing medical response._

A split-second of pride swelled in Casey's chest as orders and reports began coming in over his earpiece. This was his operation. He was the man in charge. He hadn't given an order, yet every single agent knew their job. Their handling of this violent disaster was admirably efficient. Then, he took pause as he realized there was one voice he hadn't yet heard over the radio: his partner's.

Casey glanced over to the corner of the restaurant where he last saw his partner and her mark seated. He didn't see Sarah anywhere. All he saw was a cluster of countless bullet holes bored into the wall where he expected her to be. Casey's heart began to pound faster. The adrenaline finally arrived in full.

Casey vaulted over the bar, scarcely noticing the mess of broken glass he sent shattering to the floor in the process. Glancing around and briefly assessing the extent of the damage as he landed, he barked his first order into his watch before running to where he last saw his partner, "Call in local EMT support. Our guys aren't gonna be enough."

Within three quick strides, he spotted her. Curled on her side and clutching at her ribs, Sarah was lying on the ground behind the table she was seated at only moments ago and not moving. He brought his radio watch to his mouth. "Agent down. Repeat, we've got an agent down." Casey crossed the distance between them in an instant, not truly hearing the other calls of casualties coming over his earpiece. Shoving the entire table to the side to make room, he knelt on the ground beside her. Casey heard Sarah groan faintly and he felt a flood of relief. His partner was alive.

Suddenly, Sarah curled further inwards and attempted to push herself up off the floor on her elbow. "Casey," she hissed through tightly-clenched teeth, "I'm hit."

"I know," he grunted, concern beginning to radiate from his blue eyes. Sarah continued to struggle to sit up and Casey laid a firm, restraining hand on her shoulder. "Cut it out," he admonished. "Don't try to move. Medics are coming."

Sarah slowly let her head come to a rest on the ground again. She gulped once, as if trying to swallow the pain, before speaking again. "Gilles?"

A fleeting thought briefly passed through Casey's mind. Even wounded, Walker was focused on the mission. He had to admire that. Casey glanced over his shoulder. The mark of the night lay behind him, also wounded. Noting the pair of bullet holes marring Gilles's face and neck, Casey knew there was no reason to get up and check his status. Casey merely looked down at Sarah and shook his head. Sarah's gaze met his for a moment. Her eyes were starting to look glassy, Casey noticed. Then, Sarah's head lolled to the side as she spotted fresh movement behind Casey's back.

"_Puta!_ Ella es policía?"

Casey's head swung around to see Gilles's surviving henchman sitting against the wall looking shell-shocked. "She's a cop?" the thug echoed, this time in english. "She set us up!" As the hulking man began to rise to his feet, two agents seemingly materialized nearby, guns at the ready. He fell back against the wall and slowly let his hands raise into the air. Casey gave each of the responding CIA agents a quick look then jerked his head towards the thug against the wall.

"Are you injured?" the agent on the right barked at the seated goon. He shook his head in response, then both agents closed in and hauled him to his feet. They dragged him away from Sarah and Casey's corner of the restaurant within seconds.

"Secure him at Castle," Casey issued the order through his watch before returning his attention to Sarah. "Shit," he muttered to himself, noting that in the few moments of distraction, Sarah seemed to grow three shades whiter.

He spoke into his watch again. "ETA on medics?"

_On their way in. Two minutes_. A voice buzzed in his ear. He couldn't identify who it was.

Sarah's breathing was growing more labored. Without a word, Casey grabbed Sarah's hand and pulled it away from its spot against her ribs to assess the wound. The bullet hole was in the right side of her chest, about an inch below the swell of her breast. Strikingly vivid red blood pooled in the gash, blossoming like a lurid rose in stark contrast against the deep purple of Sarah's designer cocktail dress. Casey's eye's briefly went wide at the sight. He immediately schooled his expression into one of stony blankness, hoping Sarah hadn't noticed.

Casey shrugged his bartender's uniform vest off of his shoulder, wadded it up, and pressed it firmly against Sarah's ribs. A shudder seemed to move through her entire body and Sarah emitted a strained cry. Her voice came out at a far higher pitch than Casey was used to hearing. "Hurts..."

"Gotta keep pressure on it. You know that," Casey bluntly answered. Sarah nodded slightly, without lifting her head from the floor. She seemed to be gasping for air now, and Casey noticed that a fine red mist seemed to be coating the blonde's lips with each breath.

After several tense seconds, Sarah's suddenly reached out and grabbed Casey's arm, leaving a full, bloody handprint on his white sleeve. "Casey?" She wheezed. A look of desperation took over her quickly dulling blue eyes as she started up at her NSA partner. "You have to tell Chuck... tell him that I'm..."

"Can it, Walker," Casey interrupted. "You're not dying." In a softer, but still gruff tone he added, "You can tell him all about your lady feelings later." Inwardly, he gravely hoped she wasn't about to make liar out of him.

Her grip on Casey's arm loosened and her hand slid away, adding a trail of red streaks to the sanguine handprint. Seconds were ticking by at an agonizingly slow pace. Sarah quieted and lay still, only wincing slightly when Casey pushed his crumpled, bloodied vest tighter against her gunshot wound. "Can't... breathe..." she finally gasped.

"Then stop trying to talk." Casey looked up and quickly surveyed the scene inside the restaurant. Most of his colleagues were busied with tending to the injured or corralling and calming the civilians. An agent remained at each exit with their guns still in hand. He spotted a team of paramedics finally approaching the main entrance. His relief at the sight was interrupted when his wounded partner's stillness broke into a fit of harsh coughing that quickly transitioned into a pained whine. Casey glanced down just in time to see Sarah spit out a mouthful of blood. She seemed to breathe easier, but Casey's own sense of urgency increased.

Speaking into his watch again, Casey commanded, "First priority medical team to my position." Deciding to forgo radio use any longer, he simply shouted across the room, "_Hurry it up!_"

* * *

><p>"Look. I get it. You're a UCLA man. You have to be optimistic but I'm telling you, this just isn't their year." A bespectacled, dark-skinned man in hospital scrubs lounged in a spare wheelchair near the admin desk of the Westside Medical Center emergency room. It was an atypically slow night shift for a Friday, and the evening's sleepy pace seemed to extend throughout much of the hospital. Dr. Devon Woodcomb passed through the ER on his way back up to the surgical floor from the cafeteria, but he soon found himself entrenched in a forty-five minute discussion on the prospects for the Pac-10 conference with one of the ER residents, Peter Cross.<p>

Devon flipped a Nerf football over in his hands. He had no idea where it came from, but it had been laying around the ER. "Pete, my man. You've got it all wrong. It's the defensive line that's going to push them over the edge this year. All the way." He tossed the foam football back to Dr. Cross, hitting him square in the chest.

Cross grunted and rolled backwards in his chair an inch as he clamped his hands around the ball. "Yeah, their defense is good. But it's not going to be enough. You should be looking at Stanford to take the conference this year. Finished two last year. What was UCLA, like eight?"

"Nah. I know Stanford. My bro-in-law went there. I've visited the place. They don't have the heart for it." Devon easily caught Cross's return lob of the ball and fired it back immediately. A brown-haired nurse busied herself over a computer at the admin desk only a few feet away. She glanced up at the football-tossing doctors and rolled her eyes. Neither of them noticed.

"Hey, didn't you say your brother-in-law quit his job and ran off to Europe with his girlfriend or something?"

Devon hesitated. "Uh... uh, yeah." He mentally chastised himself for even mentioning Chuck. Chuck was not a comfortable subject for him. He knew that the extended trip to Europe had to have been about spy stuff and not a lovers' getaway, but he didn't know the details. Though Devon assumed it was something awesome, straight out of a Bond film. However, lying about it was not easy. In his mind, he hadn't quite reconciled the Chuck he thought he knew versus the spy version of Chuck he discovered right before the wedding.

"Smart, smart man... running away from all this. How long has he been gone?"

"Six months. He left right after Ellie and I got back from our honeymoon."

Cross whistled. "Sounds like he's getting a better honeymoon than you did."

Devon chuckled nervously, but before he could respond their conversation was interrupted when the dispatch radio suddenly crackled to life.

_EMS Dispatch to Westside. Dispatch to Westside. Do you copy?_

The brunette charge nurse at the desk looked up from her computer and grabbed the radio. "Westside. Over."

_We've got reports of a shooting at a downtown club. Mass casualty. What's your capacity?_

The nurse looked up at the white board on the wall for a moment. It was relatively empty. "We've got room for three major, seven minor. Over."

_Copy that, Westside. Three and seven. ETA is ten minutes._

The nurse put the radio down and immediately sprang into action, summoning the scattered emergency room staff and getting them organized for the incoming chaos. As she hurried away from the desk calling for supplies, Devon turned to the ER doctor he had been talking with.

"Whoa, bro. Sounds like you've got a rough night ahead of you."

"Yeah. I've gotta run. Stick around, though GSW's. We might need a heart guy." He tossed the Nerf football back to Devon as he got up.

Devon caught the football and chuckled awkwardly. "Sure thing, man." He didn't say anything else. The adrenaline of emergency medicine had some appeal to him, but he realized long ago that most people didn't appreciate any form eagerness when it came to gunshot victims. He leaned back against the admin desk and opted to stay out of the way until he was needed.

* * *

><p>The two agents manning the main entrance pointed the first medical team towards Casey and Sarah. The paramedic with the sandy crew-cut rushed ahead while his partner lagged behind to leave the gurney near the door rather than drag it through the mess.<p>

The paramedic knelt on the ground next to Casey and Sarah, dropping his bag of gear beside him. "What've we got?"

Casey glanced at the name on the man's uniform: Foley. He immediately recognized him as one of the agency's medics and not a local. For this, Casey was thankful. It meant fewer questions. "Agent Walker. Chest shot. She's bleeding out. Trouble breathing." Casey looked down at Sarah once more. She seemed to be fighting to keep her eyes open. He wasn't sure if she even realized Foley had joined them. With a slightly lower tone, he added, "and fading fast."

"Cameron!" Foley shouted to his partner. "Bring the board and c-collar." The other paramedic nodded her head as she grabbed the requested equipment from the gurney and hurried over to join him.

Foley reached for the blood-soaked vest that Casey packed against Sarah's wound. "I got it." Casey nodded and relinquished his hold. Realizing his hands were both covered in Sarah's blood, he did the only thing he could think of and simply wiped them on his pant legs. With more qualified personnel caring for Sarah now, Casey took a moment to assess the scene. More medical teams had arrived and seemed to be triaging the wounded, looking for those in most immediate need. The unharmed civilians still seemed to be on the verge of panic, but several pairs of agents had them all corralled and relatively quieted. His quick survey revealed at least five recognizable agents had been hit. Unfortunately, the agents weren't the only ones. Not to mention, the property damage would take all night for the cleaners to fix. The mark was dead. The assailant was dead. The information pipeline was effectively closed. In military terms, this was a textbook clusterfuck.

Meanwhile, both paramedics Foley and Cameron hovered over Sarah. Cameron quickly looked over the bleeding gash on Sarah's chest while Foley briefly rubbed his knuckles against her sternum in an attempt to rouse her. "Agent Walker? Can you hear me?" It didn't work. Sarah's eyes had since closed. "She's unresponsive." With a nod to his partner, Foley declared, "Scoop and run time, Heather."

Casey looked down again and realized that with amazing efficiency, the paramedics were nearly finished strapping Sarah onto a rigid spine board with a heavy brace around her neck. "Report," Casey ordered.

"We don't have time for a full assessment, Colonel Casey. We need to get her to the hospital ASAP. We're taking every precaution in the meantime," Foley stated briskly.

Casey nodded in assent. "I need to accompany you." Neither paramedic argued.

Foley and Cameron lifted the Sarah's unconscious body off the ground on the long spine board and carried her towards their waiting gurney at the entrance. Before following, Casey pressed the button on his watch to speak, smearing blood over its surface in the process. "Dugan. I'm going offsite. I'm leaving scene control and cleanup in your hands. Keep the local PD out but let the EMTs in if we need them. No media within two-hundred yards. I want reports every fifteen minutes. Sooner if this goes south."

_Acknowledged Colonel._

Casey knew and trusted Tim Dugan. Dugan was the second-ranking NSA agent present, and a fellow Marine which made him doubly trustworthy. Casey's professional mind told him to stay behind. This was his operation and his mess to oversee. Semper fidelis won out, however. He could not leave his partner behind. With that, Casey sprinted across the room to catch up to the quickly fleeing paramedics.

Casey exited El Bucho just in time to see the paramedics Foley and Cameron loading Sarah into the first of a fleet of ready ambulances. Foley jumped into the back of the rig while the smaller, female member of the pair rushed for the cab. Without an invitation, Casey jumped into the passenger seat of the ambulance, joining Cameron up front. "Which hospital?"

Cameron responded as she revved the ignition and flipped on the sirens. "Westside."

"No. Take Walker to Sinai or UCLA. Whichever is closer."

"No can do, Colonel!" Foley shouted from the rear of the ambulance as he started feeding an IV into Sarah's left arm. "She's critical. Every second counts and Westside is the closest trauma center. She might not make it to UCLA."

Casey grunted with uncharacteristic frustration. "Do what you need to." Casey grabbed the ambulance's radio and tuned it to the mission frequency. "I need a back-up team to follow medical one to Westside Medical Center. Scene management assistance will be required. I'm going to need company." The word company had a double meaning. Sarah was CIA and he would need CIA resources to help manage her cover. This one wasn't a job for the NSA.

Dugan's voice came over the radio. _Perimeter team Echo, what's your status?_

A sharp, feminine voice replied. _Alpha through Delta have it. Perimeter is stable. We're roving._

_Got it Rizzo. I'm dispatching you and and Carter to Westside._

She woman on the radio replied again, this time sounding less than pleased. _On our way. We're thirty seconds behind medical one._

A glossy black government-issue SUV peeled out of El Bucho's parking lot in hot pursuit of the already-speeding ambulance with the screaming sirens.

Casey grunted again as something tickled in the back of his brain. The name Rizzo felt like it should raise a red flag in his mind. As soon as it came to him, his grunt turned into a groan. _Rizzo. _He couldn't decide if this was the best or worst thing to happen to him all night. _Shit, shit, shit..._

"This is about to turn into clusterfuck number two," Casey remarked to Cameron. Cameron quirked an eyebrow at him, not quite understanding, but kept on driving at a breakneck pace.

_To be continued..._


	3. Cluster Two

**Author's Note: **When I was eleven years old, I began a fifteen-year habit of watching _ER_ religiously every Thursday night. Shall we see if I learned anything?

**Author's Note #2: **It's probably pretty evident by now that I'm doing this without a beta. With every re-read, I keep catching more of my own mistakes. So, apologies for the typos. And yes, Cruz's gun was an MP5 and not an MK5. My bad.

**(I still don't own "Chuck" - the standard disclaimer still applies.)**

* * *

><p><strong>Day 0<strong>

**Westside Medical Center ER, Los Angeles, CA**

The distant wail of an ambulance served as the opening serenade of the evening. A team of doctors and nurses, all clad in blue scrubs and paper sterile gowns, stood in the ambulance bay of the Westside Medical Center emergency room. They waited.

Inside, loitering by the admin desk, Dr. Devon Woodcomb couldn't hear the sirens. Not yet.

With every second, the oscillating cry of the ambulance grew louder until the noise abruptly cut upon the rig's arrival in the ambulance bay. Mere seconds later, a glossy black SUV flashing blue lights came to a tire-screeching halt behind the ambulance. Already, a second siren could faintly be heard in the far distance.

The rear doors of the ambulance burst open and the waiting medical team burst into action. CIA medics Foley and Cameron snapped the breaks off of the gurney and a waiting nurse helped guide it out of the ambulance to reveal the patient, her face now partially obscured by an oxygen mask.

Dr. Peter Cross, chief ER resident, rushed up to the gurney to assist the nurse and paramedics. "What've we got?"

Almost mechanically, Foley responded with the details. "Female, late 20s, _no ID_. Lost consciousness on the scene. Single 9 millimeter GSW to the upper right quadrant. No exit wound. BP is 85 over 60, pulse 120 and thready. Took one unit of saline on the ride over."

In the same moment, a hospital security guard jogged up to the haphazardly-parked SUV and knocked on the driver's side window. He was nearly knocked over when the door forcefully swung open. An olive-skinned brunette woman wearing a tailored dark grey suit jumped out of the door and immediately headed for the ambulance. "Hey!" The security guard reached for the woman's arm, trying to get her attention. "You can't park there!"

She expertly dodged the guard's grasping hand without even glancing over her shoulder. She pulled a badge out of her suit jacket and flashed it in his face as she continued her purposeful stride towards the ambulance cab. "Sure I can."

Ignoring the guard's continued protestations, the female agent paused momentarily, giving the patient being unloaded from the ambulance a quick glance. "Shit," she muttered to herself. "That really _is_ Walker." The opening of the ambulance's passenger-side door interrupted her moment of worry. Casey jumped to the ground to greet her.

"Zondra Rizzo," he said flatly, immediately recognizing her as one of Sarah's former teammates - none of whom he had fond memories of. "I thought it was you. I didn't know you were on this op."

"Nice to see you too, Casey." She sounded no more pleased than he did. "I should be in Guadalajara. Got pulled for a last minute sub when the other guy got caught in Dubai," Zondra's tone carried a hint of impatient bitterness. She glanced over her shoulder at the action at the rear of the ambulance again. "Gimme the sit-rep. What do you need me for?"

"Listen," Casey began his hushed and hurried explanation. "Walker and I have been in LA for two and a half years babysitting a top-priority asset. She's playing girlfriend, I'm the neighbor. Asset's not involved in this mess, but the sister and brother-in-law, Ellie and Devon Woodcomb, both work in this hospital. Walker's cover is one wrong word from being blown wide open and the asset's and mine'll go down right with hers. Brother-in-law is in the know. Sister does not and cannot know. Keep Walker covered while I get this place on lockdown. Got it?"

"Oh no," Zondra protested, following Casey as he jogged off to follow Sarah and the medical team. "I did not get pulled off my assignment to clean up Sarah's mess. And believe me, she's not going to want-"

With his partner still accompanying Sarah into the hospital, Foley ran up to Zondra and Casey, interrupting their argument. "Colonel," he panted, "She's not clean yet."

"You're supposed to do that in the rig," Casey snapped louder than he should, knowing his words were nearly drowned out by the siren of another approaching ambulance.

"I was too busy trying to keep your partner _alive_, Colonel," Foley snapped back.

The arguing agents and paramedic passed through the doors into the emergency room proper just as the second ambulance wheeled into the bay with yet another black SUV on its heels.

Casey grunted, the noise translating to a mix of stress and irritation. He turned to Zondra, "You heard him. I need you to go clean her up."

"Hey. I told you. Sarah has a problem with me and I have a problem with her. I don't want to fix her mess and she wouldn't want me in the middle of it either. Carter's out in the car pulling docs, I'll get him in here."

Zondra attempted to head back outside, but Casey reached out and grabbed her arm. She turned to face him again with a venomous glare. "Hands off, Casey."

Casey tightened his grip, "I don't think Walker is in any shape to protest having you here right now."

She squinted at him, the toxicity of her gaze decreasing slightly. "How bad is it?"

"Bad," Casey growled. "Despite whatever garbage went down between you, she was your team and she's dying in there. I'm not asking. I'm ordering. You know her and that means I need you. Go clean her up before one of these doctors hurts themselves."

"She's your partner now, not mine."

"Yeah, but I don't know how you girls hide everything under those little dresses of yours and I'm not about to reaching up Walker's skirt to find out."

Zondra gaze Casey a scrutinizing look, as if cataloguing mental notes. The two agents stared at each other in stalemate for another moment before Zondra finally jerked her arm out of Casey's grasp. "Fine. You're right."

* * *

><p>Devon patiently waited at the ER's main desk, absently rolling the football back and forth between his hands and watching as the first shooting victim wheeled in on a gurney far down the hall. He registered some surprise at seeing what he thought to be a pretty blond coming in from the middle of a shooting. <em>Probably a bystander<em>, he mentally noted. _Not awesome._ He realized he didn't recognize either of the paramedics either. They definitely weren't regulars.

Then, something else caught his eye. A hulking man with a blood-covered shirt and and brunette woman in a dark suit seemed to be caught in a tense argument right at the ambulance entrance. The man in the bloody shirt turned his head briefly and Devon felt his blood suddenly run cold in recognition. _John Casey._

There was a shooting. John came in with a victim. _This wasn't gang stuff. This was spy stuff!_ The victim was blond. _Blond. Pretty. Oh god..._

Devon didn't even hear the surprised protest of the desk clerk when the football he haphazardly tossed behind the desk hit her in the shoulder. He was already sprinting towards trauma room one.

The trauma room doors swung wildly as Devon burst through them. The doctors and nurses inside barely acknowledged it. They were focused on their patient, with rapid chatter of orders and medical jargon flying back and forth across her prone form.

"_... pupils equal and reactive..."_

"_... pulse ox is 84..."_

"_... decreased breath sounds on the right..."_

Devon recognized the voice of his friend, Peter Cross, assessing his patient's condition. For a moment, Devon's medical professionalism dissipated and he froze. That was Sarah on the table and she was badly wounded. The spy stuff had gone horribly wrong.

"_... bullet perfed the right lung... definite hemopneumo..."_

"_... dress must have cost a fortune, can't believe we're going to ruin it more..."_

"_... intubation tray!"_

This left one looming question in Devon's mind: _where was Chuck?_

Devon snapped out of his reverie when he realized someone was calling his name. He stared for another moment, watching as one of the junior residents slid a plastic endotracheal tube down Sarah's throat.

"Woodcomb!" Cross repeated. "What's going on?"

Devon panicked. He didn't know what he was supposed to say. Was he supposed to lie? He decided he should have gone to see John before looking after Sarah. At a loss, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "I-I know her!"

"What?" One of the nurses piped up. Devon thought her name was Joanie. "She came in as a Jane Doe."

Knowing the he had already said too much, Devon just kept talking and staring in disbelief. "She's my bro-in-law's girlfriend. _Sarah._" The gaze of every doctor and nurse in the room turned to give a second look at Sarah's face, now adorned with tape to hold the tube in her mouth in place.

* * *

><p>John Casey charged towards the ER main desk. Too focused on finding his quarry, he neglected to take notice of a red-headed nurse exiting trauma room his partner was being treated in. The nurse grabbed the phone on the wall and punched in a department code.<p>

"_Neuro."_ The voice on the other side of the phone greeted.

"Can you page Dr. Bartow- Dr. Eleanor Woodcomb down to the ER, stat?"

"_Will do. I'll get her down there shortly."_

The clerk at the main desk nearly choked on her coffee as Casey abruptly demanded her attention. It wasn't the blood on his clothes that disturbed her. This was a Los Angeles ER. Blood happened. It was his urgency, demeanor and icy glare.

Several yards away, another doctor slipped out into the ambulance bay. The brief opening of the doors allowed the sound of a third ambulance arriving to make its way indoors.

"I need to speak to whoever is in charge. Now." Casey stared the desk clerk down.

"Dr. Richards is the attending doc on tonight, but she's with a patient. You'll have to wait," the clerk explained. Despite the vague feeling of unease this man gave her, the clerk maintained a tone of casual disinterest.

Since the second he found out that he and Walker were traveling to Westside, Casey knew that both of their covers were going to be on thin ice. In a split-second, he made a decision. _Buy More be damned_. He had more important things to worry about. Casey took his badge out of his pocket and slammed it on the desk in front of the clerk and growled, "Federal agent. I need to see her. _Now._"

Something in Casey's tone unnerved the clerk enough to snap her out of her indifference. Cops had tried to bully her into prioritizing their needs over medicine before. She was used to it. But, this agent seemed more serious than usual. "Right, right sir," she said as she grabbed the phone. Moments later, the clerk's voice echoed throughout the ER on the PA system. _Dr. Richards to admin. Dr. Richards to admin. Stat. Seriously, stat._

The ambulance bay doors swung open again, admitting a gurney carrying the gunshot patient who arrived in the third ambulance moments ago. The doors swung back closed and open again within an instant, as two dark-suited CIA agents pushed their way through in pursuit of the patient on the gurney.

A voice crackled to life in Casey's earpiece. _Third downed agent is in. Six able agents on scene._

* * *

><p>Another nurse spoke up, looking at Devon with alarm. "Ohmigod, she was in your wedding, wasn't she?"<p>

"... uh, uh yeah," Devon responded lamely.

"What was she doing mixed up in something like this?"

Before Devon could formulate any response, the trauma room doors swung open again. The dark-haired woman he saw arguing with Casey charged into the room, with the red-headed nurse hot on her heels.

"Hey!" one of the residents yelled. "You can't be in here, ma'am!"

The woman reached into her suit jacket and pulled her badge out again to declare her status. "Federal agent. Your patient has something I need."

"We need to get her stabilized first," the resident protested. "It can wait." The rest of the medical team kept working despite the interruption.

"_... BP is down to 80 over 60..."_

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

"_... hang another unit of saline. Get a rush on that type and cross-match and push 10 of dopamine..."_

"A positive," the dark-haired agent suddenly stated. The arguing resident stared at her. "The Jane Doe. Your patient. Her blood type is A positive."

"Uh, right. Thank you," the resident conceded. He glanced at Devon, "Hey man, I thought you said her name was..."

"Jane Doe. This is a federal matter," she interrupted sharply, as if that somehow explained everything.

"_... sats are 82 and falling..." _

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Devon suddenly spoke up, "Who are you? And where's John?"

"Agent Rizzo. He sent me." Zondra immediately realized she had run into the mythical brother-in-law. She mentally cursed herself for not intercepting Sarah sooner. "You must be Woodcomb. Now, if you let me through you can all get back to work." She took an impatient step forward.

All eyes quickly turned to Devon. "She's cool," he said, though inwardly he didn't know if that was the truth.

A male nurse suddenly accosted Zondra with a sterile paper gown and tied it at her back. "You need to wear that if you're getting close."

"Not like she hasn't bled all over me before," Zondra muttered. The nurse gave her an odd look.

Zondra cut in between a doctor and a nurse, helping herself to a pair of forceps off of an instrument tray. The nurse started to protest, but with a look Zondra made it clear she wasn't having it. Everyone stared.

"Hey!" Dr. Cross called. "Let her do what she needs to, but keep working. We've got a bad hemopneumothorax building, so get me my chest tube tray."

Zondra leaned forward and paused for a moment. She saw it. Sarah was frighteningly pale and slightly blue. Sarah Walker had been her best friend and trusted teammate - a fellow CAT. Sarah Walker also became a very sharp thorn in her side. The distrust and accusations that bubbled up from a single tracking bug in a boot heel were suddenly forgotten as memories of the good collided with fear of the present. Zondra had wished a lot of bad things upon her former friend, but death was never one of them. With new resolve, she regathered her wits to focus on her mission.

As one nurse moved to grab the instruments Cross ordered, most eyes still lingered on Zondra. The eyes went wider when Zondra shallowly reached into Sarah's left ear with the long forceps and pulled out her earpiece. Not giving anyone time to get a good glimpse, Zondra palmed the earpiece and quickly moved down Sarah's body to remove her watch from amidst the tangle of purple beaded bracelets on her wrist. A few of the medical personnel exchanged glances as if asking each other the same question: why was this woman's watch, of all things, so important?

Devon simply stood stunned as the reality of the nebulous "spy stuff" slowly crashed to the ground around him. It was definitely not awesome.

Zondra kept moving, not oblivious to the stares but unconcerned by them. She slipped a hand under the hem of Sarah's skirt and after the audible release of Velcro straps, she pulled out a black nylon holster and a pair of steel knives.

Several questioning eyes looked at Devon. He didn't notice. His eyes were only on the mysterious Agent Rizzo.

The sound of Velcro interrupted the tension again, and some of the medical personal froze at the resulting sight: _a gun_. Zondra pulled another black holster from Sarah's other thigh and a .22 caliber pistol with it. Almost like a robot, she unchambered its loaded round and flicked on the safety. Under her breath she just muttered, "Don't die on me, girl. I still need to kick your ass."

Zondra held up one of Sarah's knives as she backed away from the gurney. "You'll find more of these hidden in that dress. Watch your fingers. If you find them, give them to me. In fact, all personal belongings go to me and _only_ me. Her full medical records are on the way. I'll be right back." She spun on her heel to head for the door, stripping her paper gown away a she went.

She poked her head back in the door one last time before disappearing down the hallway. With grave seriousness and the edge of a threat, she gave one last order to everyone in the room. "_No one_ saw anything."

The door swung back and forth on its hinges as Zondra left.

A nurse finally gave voice to what everyone was thinking. "Dr. Woodcomb? What does she do for a living, exactly?"

Devon searched for words for a moment before finally just admitting the truth, sort of. "She serves yogurt?"

The only noise in the room was the beeping and clicking of machinery until Dr. Cross's voice rang out again. "Chest tube! Now people!"

Questions forgotten, the medical team scurried back into action with nurses beginning to cut away at Sarah's clothing and Dr. Peter Cross readying his scalpel for the thoracostomy.

* * *

><p>Having turned the admin area into a very temporary command post, Casey stood in quiet conference with two agents. In tandem, they all shot the gum-chewing clerk sharp glares whenever she seemed to make an attempt to listen in.<p>

A doctor in blue scrubs and glasses with a mix of blond and grey hair stormed up to the desk looking highly displeased. "Meg!" she blurted. The clerk jumped to her feet. "We have multiple traumas. What the hell is so important that you have to pull me away from the patients?"

The clerk merely pointed at Casey.

"Dr. Richards?" Casey confirmed.

"Yes. Val Richards. What's going on?" Dr. Richards glanced around Casey's shoulder to see the ambulance bay doors swing open yet again. Two paramedics, both recognizable regulars, wheeled in a gurney carrying a woman with a bloodied and bandaged leg. Another man with a similarly bandaged arm walked in behind her.

Casey flashed his badge again for Dr. Richard's benefit. "Federal agents, ma'am. We need to lock down your emergency room. Now."

Clearly flustered by the chaos of the night, Dr. Richards immediately protested. "I have multiple GSW traumas already with more coming in by the minute. We do not have for this."

More forcefully, Casey continued. "This is a matter of national security. We are not asking." The other two agents accompanying him subtly shifted their positions to flank Dr. Richards. The intimidating gesture was not lost upon her.

Unsettled and wanting to return to her patients, Dr. Richards relented, "What do you need?"

* * *

><p>Dr. Richards retreated to one of the trauma rooms, having agreed under duress to allow Casey to post his own security at every entrance and exit, to enforce a media lockout and to not allow a single employee to leave without signing a statement of additional confidentiality under the penalty of law. Megan, the desk clerk, carried strict orders to keep her mouth shut and to give Casey and the other agents anything they asked for without question.<p>

Casey and the other two agents departed to officially begin the lock down that they covertly began ten minutes earlier when the elevator down the hall opened. Ellie Woodcomb exited through the doors wearing a lab coat and standard-issue blue scrubs.

Ellie casually approached the admin desk, causing the clerk to look up. "I got a page to come down here," she told the clerk. "Did someone need a neuro consult?"

The clerk blandly replied, "I dunno. We've got a bunch of GSWs."

Not realizing Ellie had arrived, Casey returned to the admin desk prepared to issue more orders. He thought he heard a voice he recognized, but he was unable to stop himself from rounding the corner to face it in time.

Ellie's eyes fell to the bloody hand print on Casey's sleeve before gradually taking in the extent of the sanguine mess that covered his once-white shirt. Her mouth fell open in surprise.

"John!"

Casey tried to maintain a neutral expression.

"Oh my god. What happened? Are you hurt? We need to get you checked out, let's-"

"I"m fine, Ellie." He interrupted. The desk clerk raised her eyebrows, knowing that things had just gotten even more interesting. "It's not my blood."

"Whose is it?" she asked, a shocked expression still on her face.

"Don't worry about it. Everything's fine." Casey switched his personality in an instant, letting the NSA agent disappear and the gruff neighbor reappear. It only lasted a moment.

Agent Rizzo came down the hallway with a hurried step, approaching Casey while paying Ellie no heed.

"Casey, I've got..." Zondra began.

Casey gave her a wide-eyed glare that could only have one translation: _shut up!_

Zondra halted and glanced between Casey and Ellie, narrowing her eyes. "... the stuff you asked me to grab," she finished her sentence vaguely, understanding Casey's unspoken meaning. She quickly tried to surreptitiously rebundle the weapon holsters in her hand to better obscure the contents.

"Give them to me later," Casey kept his voice low. "How's it going in there?"

Zondra shook her head gravely. "I don't know."

"Hi?" Ellie interjected awkwardly. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, John?"

"Nothing you need to worry about, Ellie," he tried to deflect again.

"You're hurt, John," she tried to remind him, "and I'm a doctor."

"I'm fine..."

"No, you're not. Look." Ellie stepped in between Zondra and Casey and grabbed his left arm. "You're bleeding."

With Ellie distracted, Zondra questioningly mouthed the word "sister" to Casey. Casey nodded in confirmation. Then, he twisted his arm to see what had Ellie so concerned. A deep cut slashed through the skin of his upper left arm. It had only been just under an hour since Cruz opened fire in El Bucho. Through all of the adrenaline, stress and worry, Casey hadn't even noticed his own injury. A disbelieving grunt of "huh" was all he had to say in reply to Ellie.

Ellie lightly probed the wound through the tear in Casey's shirt. "Seriously, John... what were you doing? I think that's a piece of glass stuck in there. You're going to need stitches. Let's get you to a suture room and I'll have a nurse start-"

A baby-faced, brown-haired agent in a dark suit and tie came scrambling past several waiting patients with a thick file folder in his hands. He stopped in front of Casey and Zondra, interrupting Ellie's medicinal fretting. He began talking, seemingly without a bit of forethought.

"I've got the fully-redacted medical records on Walker and-"

Zondra snatched the entire folder from his hands. "Thank you, Carter," she hissed.

"The power of attorney forms are also in there, the Colonel just needs to sign and I'll find Agent-"

"Thank you, Carter," Zondra repeated more sharply, interrupting the young agent again and glancing at Ellie, hoping Carter would rapidly get a clue. Zondra opened up the file folder and rifled through it, plucking out several documents. She gave the folder back to her temporary partner with an order of, "Get the rest of this where it needs to go."

Carter's expression remained neutral, showing neither sign of understanding nor admonishment. "Yes, ma'am." He scurried off again.

"Farm fresh," Zondra muttered to Casey. Casey grunted in understanding. Carter was new.

"_Walker?_" Ellie interrupted again, unease rapidly growing in her voice. "John? … Sarah... Walker?"

Casey looked at Ellie stoically, knowing she was not nearly stupid enough to accept any answer save for the truth. He simply nodded while mentally vowing to see this 'Carter' reassigned to a Siberian observation post.

Zondra suddenly shoved the bundle of equipment she was holding into Casey's hands. "Cat's out of the bag," she briefly cringed at her own unintentional pun. "This one's all yours now." Zondra turned her attention to the pile of papers in her hands and began rapidly flipping through them.

"Don't you lie to me, John," Ellie warned, her audible unease still growing. "Sarah's supposed to be in Paris with my brother. What the hell is going on? And don't you dare tell me I don't need to worry about it... because it is way, way too late for that."

Largely unnoticed, the previously-bored desk clerk watched the unfolding drama between Casey and Ellie with rapt attention. Her attention shifted with Zondra knocked sharply on the desk. "Hey," Zondra said pointing at a thick black sharpie marker, "give me that." The clerk unquestioningly tossed the marker to the demanding agent and returned her attention to Ellie.

For a moment, Casey desperately wished he could switch places with Sarah. He could not deny that the business of managing their covers with the extended Bartowski clan was something Sarah always handled far more gracefully than he did. Then, he remembered she was far worse off than he was. "Sarah's not in Paris. She was with me tonight. She was injured and-"

"Why was she with you and not my brother?" Ellie demanded. "Are they having trouble again? Or..." Ellie paused, then her brown eyes went wide. "John, tell me that's not Sarah's blood all over you..."

Ellie took Casey's lack of response as an affirmation of her suspicions. Ellie struggled to find more words for a moment as her worries began to veer in two completely opposite directions. Finally, her concern for her brother won out over that for his girlfriend. Trying her best to sound calm and serious she asked, "Where's my brother, John? _Where's Chuck_?"

Casey didn't have a chance to answer. "I need you, Casey," Zondra called from further down the desk. Casey held up a finger to Ellie, encouraging her to wait. Casey stepped to the side to see Zondra quickly pouring through a series of heavily blacked-out pages from Sarah's file, and adding her own redactions and edits to the many that the file came in with. Casey found himself to be thankful he had company who was actually familiar with Sarah's past missions and medical mishaps, even if it was Zondra Rizzo. She slid a single form over to Casey and simply ordered, "Sign."

Not content to wait, Ellie followed Casey down the desk. An expression of shock took over her face when she saw the papers. The woman she didn't recognize had numerous sheets spread out before her, all covered with more black marks than legible text. Printed at the upper left of the first page was a xerox-quality copy of a photo of a woman she recognized as Sarah Walker. Zondra glanced over her shoulder then followed Ellie's stunned gaze down to the papers. Though it was already too late, Zondra quickly scribbled over the photo with her marker. "You didn't see that," she stated.

"Yes I did!" Ellie countered. "That was..." Ellie didn't finish her own thought. Her eyes drifted to paper Casey was adding his signature to. "Why? How? Is that a power of attorney form!"

Zondra snatched the sheet of paper from Casey and added it to her own pile. "I'm bringing these where they need to go." She glanced at Ellie. "Good luck, Colonel. You're gonna need it." Zondra turned on her heel and rushed back towards trauma room one.

Casey turned back around to see that Ellie had stepped away. She had her cell phone out and up to her ear. Casey reached out and removed the phone from her grasp, turning it off in the same motion. She responded with a shocked stare.

"I can't let you call Chuck right now. He does _not_ need to know about this." Casey handed Ellie's phone back to her.

Ellie's emotions began to flare, "Why the hell not?" The next question that came out of her mouth sounded ludicrous to even her own ears, but at the moment it was the only conclusion that made even a shred of sense. "Is there something going on between you and Sarah that you don't want him finding out about?"

Casey briefly sneered in disgust. "Ugh. No."

"Then I think you owe me some answers," Ellie responded with a nervous growl. She couldn't prioritize any longer. A flood of questions came out in a torrent. "Why were you with her tonight? What happened? Why is she not in Europe? How the hell do you have power of attorney for her? And... _where is Chuck?_"

"Chuck is not here," Casey tried his best to calm Ellie, but frantic women were far from his area of expertise. "He was nowhere near this tonight. Sarah just got caught in the middle. You don't need to worry about him right now."

"Caught in the middle of what?" Ellie demanded again, beyond exasperated. Then, she paused as a new thought dawned on her. Her tone became cautious, "Who was that woman and why did she call you Colonel?" That thought exited her mind as quickly as it entered, replaced by her all-encompassing worry again. "Crap. I need to call Chuck."

"No," Casey said, sounding more forceful than he intended.

"I don't think that's your right to tell me, John." Ellie turned her phone back on.

Gravely, he simply replied, "It is."

Before he could elaborate, Ellie cried out, "Oh god!"

Casey turned to see what she was reacting to. Down the hall, the doors to the trauma room opened again. A doctor and nurse pushed Sarah's unconscious form on a gurney out into the hallway, heading for the elevator. In an instant, Casey and Ellie both forgot about their stalemate and ran to see Sarah.

* * *

><p>An orderly sauntered up to the main desk and leaned against it casually. The clerk gazed down the hallway, watching the gathering of people in the elevator lobby.<p>

"Hey," he asked. "You catch all that, Meg?"

She nodded absently, still gazing down the hall.

"You know what this is all about?"

"Not really," she admitted. "They're all some kind of feds. FBI, I guess."

"No way, chica," the orderly countered. "Yeah, I get that they're feds but there ain't no way in hell these guys are FBI. I been lookin' around."

Meg glanced up and down the hallway. The arguing at the admin desk distracted her enough that she hadn't noticed what else was going on around her. Men and women in dark suits were stationed everywhere. Despite it being after 11 at night and indoors, most were wearing dark sunglasses. No one seemed to be able to pass one of the dark suits by without questions and showing ID.

"We've had FBI in here. They're just like cops with different badges. These guys are a whole 'nother crazy. It's like they don't answer to nobody."

Meg reluctantly nodded in agreement, snapping her gum once. "I heard Doc Richards talking to one of them. I think we're all about to be put under some kind of gag order. She even had me call in the hospital security chief."

"Shit. For real?" The orderly gawked. "You know what I think? Secret service... or spooks. Look at the suits. It's like we've been taken over by the _Men in Black_." The orderly glanced around with an overly-forced casual look. "Hey," he whispered. "You seen any of the charts from this?"

The clerk shook her head, then pointed at the white board behind her listing current patients. "No names."

"This is seriously weird."

The clerk gave the orderly a dubious look. Silently, they both gazed around the ER again.

"Creepy."

"Seriously."

* * *

><p>Devon and Zondra exited the trauma room behind Sarah and her primary caregivers just as Casey and Ellie arrived to meet them. Casey's eyes immediately settled on Sarah. She was covered by a sheet and a surgical drape, with one tube passing through the drape into her chest and with another in her mouth attached to a portable ventilator, and still frighteningly pale. Casey's face remained blank but he could feel his heart start beating slightly faster.<p>

Without a word, Ellie ran to Devon and he enveloped her in his arms. Neither paid his bloody paper smock any mind. Knowing the question that would be on both Ellie and Casey's mind, Devon answered it unbidden. "The bullet shattered a rib and pierced her right lung. She's relatively stable for now, but we can't get the bleeding under control. The thoracostomy is helping but we're having trouble keeping the hemopneumo at bay." Devon realized that Casey was frowning with a seeming lack of comprehension. "Hemopneumothorax," he translated. "Blood and air in the chest cavity causing the lung to collapse. She needs to get up to surgery."

Casey nodded gravely. A nurse thrust a clipboard into his hands and asked for his signature. Casey signed it without even reading. Zondra attempted to hand the folder containing Sarah's medical records to Casey, but he pointed her at Devon instead. Devon accepted the folder.

Casey pulled Devon away for a moment and Zondra slid into position creating a barrier between Ellie and the men.

"Those are official government records. Sarah's full medical history. Do not let them out of your sight."

"No way, man. These need to go with her surgical team. I'm a heart guy, but we've got the best pulmonary and thoracic guys upstairs waiting for her."

Casey grunted in irritation. He didn't have time to argue. Then, memories of a night six months ago and a horrific thought crept into his mind unbidden: _what would Bartowski do_?

Almost disgusted with the words coming out of his mouth, Casey replied. "This is your _mission_," he said, echoing words Chuck had used to convince Devon into silence the night Devon learned the truth. "I need you to keep an eye on Sarah and keep an eye on these documents. Get into that operating room and stay with her."

"Right. My mission." Devon knitted his brow seriously. "But I'm still not the right doc for this case."

"I'm not asking you to perform the surgery. I'm asking you to stay with her. Sit in the corner for all I care. Just get me updates every hour... and immediately if it goes south." Devon began nodding in agreement. Sealing the deal, Casey intoned one final point. "_For your country._"

"For my country," Devon repeated. Devon briefly opened the folder in his hands, surprise registering on his face in reaction to the ration of black or white on the paper within. "Right," he said, mostly to himself. Closing the folder again, he stepped around both Agents Casey and Rizzo and approached Ellie. Giving his wife a kiss on the forehead, he said, "Gotta go, babe. I'm gonna stick with her."

As Devon turned to join Sarah and her transport team on the elevator, Ellie desperately attempted to grab Devon's arm to pull him back to her. She missed. "Wait, honey?"

"Sorry, babe," was all Devon managed to say before the elevator doors slid closed.

Ellie turned around again to realize she was left alone in the elevator lobby with Casey and Zondra. She leaned back heavily against the wall and scrubbed a hand over her face. Her voice cracked slightly, sounding as if she was on the edge of stress-induced tears, "Will one of you please tell me what's going on?"

Casey and Zondra exchanged a look. Neither said anything.

Ellie sighed and they both turned their gazes back to her. Sounding defeated, Ellie said, "If you won't tell me anything, at least let me do something useful. Let me take care of that glass in your arm, John."

Knowing he needed to do something to appease her, Casey agreed. "All right, Ellie."

"I'll take you to a suture room. Come on."

As if playing a slow game of lethal hot potato, Casey returned the bundle of Sarah's belongings he had been carrying to Zondra. "Secure these somewhere," he asked. Zondra merely nodded and added them to the small duffel bag she now had, containing Sarah's bloody clothes and the rest of her arsenal.

For the first time, Ellie took notice. "Is that a gun?"

* * *

><p>Ellie led Casey into a brightly lit closed room. She pulled a suture kit out of a cabinet, then grabbed a pair of latex gloves. "Have a seat," she said numbly.<p>

Casey did as ordered, seating himself on the stool Ellie indicated.

"Normally a nurse would do this, but it seems like everybody's busy out there."

Suddenly, the awkward quiet was pierced by the sound of Casey's phone ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen displaying the name "Beckman."

He grunted quietly. "I have to take this call." Ellie turned to leave. "Don't go anywhere."

Not feeling as if she had a choice, Ellie took a seat. Casey abandoned his own stool and retreated to the furthest corner of the room. He answered the phone with the statement of, "Casey. Secure." Ellie's presence made that a lie, but Casey inwardly knew that wouldn't matter for much longer.

A sharp, obviously-stressed voice immediately sprung forth from the phone.

"_I received Major Dugan's report on this mess, Colonel Casey. It's been an hour. Why haven't you reported in?"_

Keeping his voice to a low murmur to prevent Ellie from listening in, he replied. "I opted to accompany Agent Walker to the hospital, General."

Casey explained his rationale for leaving El Bucho, emphasizing the state of their cover identities and the gravity of Sarah's condition. Finally, General Beckman responded with a simple inquiry:

"_Is she expected to make it?"_

Casey offered the only answer he could. "I don't know, ma'am"

Their conversation continued for several minutes, giving Ellie the opportunity to attempt several calls herself. Adding fuel to her fears, Chuck's phone continued to go directly to voice mail. Hoping the man that she thought was just her gruff neighbor would be too distracted by his own seemingly-crucial call, she left the first of many brief, vague messages for her brother: "Chuck. Please call me. It's an emergency."

On the other side of the room, a pained expression shattered Casey look of stoic calm as the General changed the subject of their discussion in a direction he did not expect.

"_We will discuss the current situation in the morning. Report in as soon as you can. Before you go, there's one last thing I need to tell you. I recognize that the timing is extremely unfortunate, but I have terminated Chuck Bartowski's training. I've sent him home. His plane should be landing in about five hours."_

In that moment, Casey decided there was no possible way his night could get any worse.

_To be continued..._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note #3: <strong>Not too long ago, NBC posted a guest list for the Chuck and Sarah wedding online in a little featurette following the airing of "Chuck vs. The Wedding Planner." Zondra's last name was listed as Rizzo there. Hopefully that source sticks!


	4. Sleeping Beauty

**Author's Note: **Thank you for all of the positive reviews so far. They've been very uplifting and encouraging.

**Author's Note #2: **I'm still working on trying to spawn chapters more quickly. Obviously, it's not working. Sorry about that.

**(Four chapters in and I've already run out of witty ways to phrase the standard disclaimer. Oh well. I still don't own **_**Chuck**_**.)**

* * *

><p><strong>Day 1<br>Casa Bartowski, Echo Park, CA**

Ellie could hear the water stop running in the shower. The aroma of fresh coffee wafted through the apartment, but it offered no temptation. She sat numbly on the couch, simply waiting. She only afforded herself the luxury of breaking down for a few scant minutes. She already dried her eyes, though the redness from the tears remained. As stressed as she was, she knew her brother had it much worse. She knew, without a doubt, that he loved that woman who was fighting for her life in the hospital. She just wished she could say for certain that the reverse was true as well. It amazed her how much doubt a few hours could dredge up. Thus, all she could do was replay her conversation with John Casey over and over in her head until her brother was ready to offer answers instead.

_Casey's time spent on the phone only left more questions in Ellie's mind. She could swear that he was deliberately choosing his words to avoid giving anything away. The only thing that stood out from the entire conversation was that whoever was on the other end of that phone was some sort of General. That fact disturbed her even more. Whatever this mess was, it must have been big. Finally, Casey ended his discussion and returned to his seat on the stool in the middle of the room. Ellie moved to sit on the stool beside his again. Almost mechanically, Ellie began unwrapping the suture kit as Casey removed his blood-soaked shirt, revealing a t-shirt beneath._

_Ellie donned a pair of latex gloves with a rubbery snap. After applying a local anesthetic, she began slowly cleaning the glass out of the cut on Casey's arm._

"_I'm not blind, you know," she stated listlessly._

_Casey merely grunted._

"_Your phone call gave me plenty of time to think. And, it's not hard to see what's going on out there." Ellie glanced over her shoulder towards the window in the suture room door before continuing. "Just like everyone else, I did my ER rotation as a med student, you realize."_

_Casey nodded slowly, uncertain as to where Ellie was going with this._

"_I've seen shooting victims come in. The police always come in with them. I haven't seen the LAPD anywhere out there, just a bunch of guys in suits. But, that's not really what stood out. I don't think Feds, whoever they all are, are any different than cops. When some stupid kid or a banger would come in, the police would always be impatient. They don't get much more patient for victims or witnesses. They just want to know when they can haul the kid off to jail or when they can get a statement. It's different, though, when it's a fellow officer on that table. They wait. They will wait forever." _

_Ellie gave Casey a searching look. He eyed her in return through a sidelong glance, as if waiting for a proverbial shoe to drop. Ellie turned her attention back to her task and a moment later Casey failed to suppress a wince as she finally pulled an inch-long fragment of glass from his flesh. Dropping the glass shard into a tray, Ellie continued speaking again. "That's what I see out there, John. The guys in suits are holding vigil."_

"_They are," he quietly admitted, knowing he was doing much the same for his fallen partner._

"_I know you're one of them. You can't hide that."_

_Casey responded with another quiet grunt. She was right. He couldn't, not anymore. "Colonel John Casey, US Marine Corps. On assignment with the NSA."_

_Ellie let out a contemplative breath. She had not expected him to be so forthcoming with the truth. Instead of reacting, she simply continued speaking. "And I think at least some of you are waiting for Sarah. She's one of you too, isn't she?"_

"_She is not NSA," he evaded._

"_Then who is Sarah Walker, John?"_

"_I know you want answers, Ellie, but I can't tell you everything." He partially wondered why he was still grasping at straws and trying to obscure the truth. Zondra was right. The cat was out of the bag. Still, protocol._

_Ellie clenched her jaw tightly as she tore open a needle packet. "Like where my brother is?"_

Casey expertly dodged most of Ellie's questions for the rest of the night, even after she finished his stitches. Ellie turned his words over and over in her head, trying to find meaning in them. However, all he left her with was assurances that Chuck was safe and orders not to tell him anything. Finding Chuck at home that morning was a genuine surprise, Casey having left her fearing the worst. Ellie also couldn't shake the feeling that John and Sarah's involvement in her brother's life meant something very different than just co-worker or girlfriend. She briefly even entertained the notion that Sarah was never really Chuck's girlfriend, but she dismissed that almost instantly. Chuck loved Sarah. She had no doubt about that.

Somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, Ellie realized that she had met John and Sarah on the very same night, even. That left her wondering just what happened to draw them into her brother's life three years ago. Without answers, everything her imagination dredged up just raised new questions, sending her on yet another lap around the emotional roller coaster. Everything that seemed to go wrong in her life since those two suddenly appeared somehow started to make sense, yet at the same time she had no idea what it meant at all.

Finally, once the sun rose, Ellie left the hospital. Casey left her with one final statement that sounded eerily like a dire warning: "_Once this is all over, Walker and I'll be vapor. The less you know, the better. It'll be easier to forget."_

Her phone buzzed, snapping Ellie out of her reverie. She glanced at its screen to see a text message from her husband. Sarah was officially out of surgery and resting in the recovery room. She nervously tapped her phone against her fingernails for a moment, hesitating. Finally she called out, "Chuck?"

Chuck's voice echoed from behind the bathroom door. "Yeah?"

"Devon said that Sarah's out of surgery."

The bathroom door burst open and Chuck appeared half-dressed in the living room in an instant. "How is she? Is she going to be okay?"

"They've upgraded her condition to fair. That's a good sign. She's stable."

"So she's going to be okay?" Chuck asked again, anxiously.

"I don't know, Chuck," Ellie admitted. The look on her brother's face immediately went from hopeful to frightened. "She was hurt badly. Sometimes you just have to take these things one day at a time." Chuck nodded slowly, anguish now creeping into his fearful expression. Ellie rose from the couch and enveloped him in a hug. "Hey, it's okay right now. All right? Finish getting dressed, get some coffee, get some aspirin. I'll make you a bagel. Then I'll take you to the hospital."

Chuck shambled into his bedroom, moving in a stunned, zombie-like manner. Ellie forced herself to retreat back into the kitchen to make her brother a bite to eat. She reminded herself that she could worry more about the great mystery John Casey and Sarah Walker later, but for now she had to be the strong one. She had to be strong for Chuck.

* * *

><p>The back of a surveillance van seemed cramped on a good day and this was not a good day at all. The only two occupants of the van were Agents John Casey and Zondra Rizzo, accompanied by the virtual presence of General Diane Beckman via flat screen monitor, yet the heaviness of the morning made the small space somehow more claustrophobic. Not having had time to return to Castle yet, a CIA van parked in the Westside Medical Center parking lot was the next best alternative for a secure discussion. Agent Rizzo and the General waited patiently while Casey finished a brief phone conversation. Casey finally turned his phone off and returned his attention to the General on the screen. She looked exhausted and stressed, almost as if she had aged several years over the past few hours. Casey felt similar to how the General looked. And of the three, no one looked happy.<p>

"Woodcomb reports that Agent Walker has been relocated from surgical recovery to a private intensive-care room. They're keeping her unconscious, but she's doing good, all things considered," Casey announced.

From the confines of the video screen, Casey could only see the General frown and nod in reponse before she spoke. "Good. See that we keep an armed guard on her door 24/7. Plain clothes, keep it inconspicuous."

"With all due respect, General," Zondra piped up, "Do you really think we're in such danger that whoever did this is going to start hunting the wounded agents at the hospital?"

"I'm going to be very honest with you both," the General wearily replied. "I don't know. We're chasing our tails right now and I don't like it. That's why I need to keep you in LA for a few more days, Agent Rizzo."

"General," Zondra protested, "The rest of my team is still in Mexico. They need me. This LA operation was supposed to be a 24-hour turnaround."

"Don't argue with me right now, Agent Rizzo. I am not in the mood for it," Beckman warned. "You have a similar background and skill set. On paper, you and Agent Walker are practically the same agent." Casey glanced at Zondra out of the corner of his eye as Beckman dared to compare her to Sarah. Unsurprisingly, he saw Zondra's jaw set in aggravation. The General continued, "I need you in her place for a few days until I can reorganize my west coast operations. I'm not keeping you forever."

"General Beckman..." Zondra attempted to protest again.

"Look," the diminutive General's irritation was growing quickly evident. "Do you understand what happened here last night? We've been tracking The Ring for months now and their response was unprecedentedly brazen. Several of our agents and civilians were gunned down in public last night. We have to treat this like a declaration of war. Your prior mission will have to wait. This takes priority."

"Understood," Zondra finally relented, looking none too pleased.

"Colonel Casey will brief you fully in a moment, for now please exit the van," the General ordered from her video screen. "I require a private word."

Zondra nodded and rolled her eyes once she turned away from the camera. She opened the door to the van and jumped out into the early morning sun. As she slammed the door shut, Casey could faintly hear her mutter, "Can't believe I'm caught up in Sarah's world of crazy again."

As soon as the van was sealed again, the General continued. "How are you holding up, Colonel?"

Casey grunted. "I'm fine. Nothing more than a few stitches."

Beckman knew better than to push further on that topic. Casey's own injuries were minor and not her concern. If the man was not going to discuss nearly losing his partner yet, so be it. "Very well. Have you heard from Chuck, yet?"

"No. I'd like to delay him finding out about this as long as I can. He won't take it well and I have better things to do than managing him."

"Agreed," the General admitted, "but I assume it's only a matter of time."

Casey grunted in assent, but offered no more words.

"Agent Rizzo does not need to know about the Intersect yet. I haven't decided what to do with Chuck, but frankly, he can't be the focus of my attention right now. Keep him out of trouble, use him if you need to, but no more involvement in our Ring operations than necessary."

_More babysitting, great, _Casey thought, but left his displeasure unvoiced. "And the fallout from last night?"

"We need to move fast but we can't act rashly. Outside of yourself and Sarah... and now Agent Rizzo, no agents involved in the field for _Operation: El Bucho_ knew the nature of the courier drop."

Casey knew where Beckman was headed with this, "... but we have a mole."

"And much higher up than I'm comfortable admitting. We have to tread carefully. I'll have further instructions for you soon." Without a single word of good-bye, the video screen went dark.

Casey leaned forward and ran a hand over his face. He took a deep breath and for a moment, merely sat in the silence of the surveillance van to gather his thoughts. Walker was going to be out of commission for months, The Ring was apparently on the offensive, and Bartowski was likely hours away from getting in the way again. He could already feel the headache growing. Finally, his stony mask restored, he yanked the van's door open to find Zondra waiting impatiently outside. "Get in here. We've got a lot to do."

* * *

><p>Awkward silence filled most of the car ride to the hospital. Chuck seemed so very angry with himself. This, more than anything else, worried Ellie. When she finally told him the true extent of Sarah's injuries, she actually thought he might break. After that, he simply got quiet. When Ellie found she couldn't take the silence anymore, she decided to stop holding back. Tired of people evading her questions, she opted to take a gamble.<p>

"How long have you known what Sarah really does?" Ellie carefully ventured, giving Chuck a quick glance.

Chuck didn't respond right away, leaving Ellie to wonder if her gamble failed and he knew nothing. Finally he just shook his head ruefully and gave an oddly fond smile. "Since our first date. I learned she was CIA somewhere after the car chase and right before she pulled a gun on me."

"Sarah's in the CIA?" The car suddenly jerked to a halt. A horn blared somewhere behind them. Flustered, Ellie quickly hit the gas again.

"I-I thought you knew?" Chuck slowly realized that Ellie had tricked him. Then, he wondered if he was still slightly intoxicated. Sarah had taught him better than to fall for something like that.

"I knew she was something. John told me who he worked for, but he wouldn't tell me anything about Sarah. I never imagined this..." Ellie shook her head in disbelief. None of this sounded like anything that was supposed to happen in real life. "What is she, then? Some kind of spy?"

The fond smile appeared on Chuck's face again. "Sarah Walker. International super spy."

"Are you serious?"

"Deadly serious."

Nerves permeated Ellie's voice with her next question. It was one of many she had been wanting to ask since catching sight of what was apparently one of Sarah's guns. "Is she dangerous?"

"No... no. Well, yes... but not to you, not to us. Just bad guys, Ellie. I promise." Chuck drew in a deep breath, his tone turning serious again. "I'm really glad you finally know. Maybe you can really get to know her now. She's just... she's just amazing, Ellie."

The nerves in Ellie's voice were replaced by pure gravity. "And what are you, Chuck?"

Chuck slumped backwards in his seat and shook his head. He had been wondering the same thing ever since he woke up from being tranquilized in a CIA van near the Prague Ruzyně Airport. "I don't know anymore."

"John wouldn't tell me anything about you either." Chuck could hear an edge in Ellie's voice. He knew what it meant. She was trying her best not to cry. "I need you to tell me something, Chuck. I've been waiting for hours. I need some answers."

He started with the one thing need knew he needed to tell Ellie above all else: "Sis, I'm sorry. They told me to tell you nothing to keep you safe... and there's still so much I know I can't say. I'm so, so sorry for lying to you. I hated it and I'm sorry. I can't say that enough. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I... I'll tell you what I can..."

Ellie refused to look at her brother as he spoke. He started at the beginning, with tales of Bryce Larkin and the mess of danger and espionage that his life uncontrollably spiraled into, his voice carrying notes of both pride and regret. His tone shifted to one of admiration as he spoke of the heroics of his partnered handlers, John Casey and Sarah Walker. He explained how his trip to Europe wasn't a lovers' getaway, but concentrated training and a chance to finally do something real and important with his life. His voice shifted again, overtaken by pain and anguish as he concluded his story.

"... and she was ready. She was ready for "us" to finally be real. I love her, Ellie and I broke her heart for nothing. This is my fault. If I hadn't... she wouldn't have been here, she wouldn't have been a spy anymore and nobody could have hurt her. Not me, not a guy with a gun."

Ellie just kept her eyes on the road as she continued driving to the hospital while Chuck told his stories.. She knew, without a doubt, that if she deviated for a moment, she would break. It was just too much.

* * *

><p>Bright sunlight shone through windows, illuminating the room with a warmth that seemed entirely inappropriate for the bleakness within. The room was large enough for two beds, but only contained one, making the sole occupant seem small and lost within the sterile, empty space.<p>

"Oh god."

Chuck was never a religious man, but those were the only words he could find. He shuddered and leaned heavily against the door frame of Sarah's hospital room, shocked by the sight before his eyes. Ellie told him it was going to be bad, but he never imagined this. To him, she looked impossibly pale. Machinery and monitors surrounded the head of her bed, tubes and wires connecting her to all of it. Those attached to her left hand were the only ones that didn't leave him stunned; everyone knew that IVs and pulse monitors were a part of the hospital. Chuck recognized the tube going into her mouth as the connection to a ventilator. The notion that she couldn't breathe on her own terrified him. Yet, it was the tube leading right into the side of her chest that unsettled him the most. He didn't know what it was or why it was there, but he knew it was disturbing. A thought entered Chuck's mind again. This couldn't possibly be real. Sarah was supposed to be invincible.

Chuck felt the urge to rush to Sarah's bedside in every fiber of his body. Yet, he could barely convince himself to move. If he dared to go any closer, the reality of the sight before him would be too close to deny. Suddenly, Chuck felt a hand on his shoulder. He glanced over to see his sister standing beside him. Devon had arrived as well, looking even more haggard then Ellie. "It's okay to go in, bro."

At Devon's urging, Chuck slowly moved towards the bed. "Oh Sarah..." be breathed, taking a seat in a chair beside her bed. He hesitantly reached out and took her hand. The contact lifted the dam and a million emotions washed over him at once. It was real. This was very real. "Sarah?"

"She's not going to wake up," Devon explained with a softness Chuck was sure he had never heard from the normally boisterous man before. "She's pretty heavily medicated right now."

"It looks worse than it is," Ellie offered from near the doorway.

"She's right," Devon continued. "Sarah's lungs took some abuse last night. She's just on the ventilator so they don't have to work so hard to get enough oxygen. It's standard procedure after that kind of surgery. She won't be on it long. Her doctor will probably try to take her off of it tomorrow morning and she'll be out of here within a week."

Chuck nodded numbly. His voice cracked faintly as he spoke, "This was never supposed to happen to her. She was the strong one And, I honestly thought that I would never see her ever again... not after what I did in Prague, and especially not like this. Not like this at all."

Chuck felt Ellie move forward and gently rub his back for a moment. Then, she whispered something to Devon and they both left, giving Chuck his privacy.

Chuck squeezed Sarah's right hand tightly, briefly brushing his lips over her knuckles.

"I know there's nothing I could say to fix this, Sarah," he began. "And... I don't even know if you can hear me, but I need you to know, I am so... so very sorry. This is all my fault."

Even though Devon said it wouldn't happen, Chuck desperately wished Sarah would show some response to his presence. He rubbed her hand as he continued to speak, "I know that I must have hurt you so very badly and I'm so, so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I never even thought I could." He kissed her knuckles again. "You are and you were everything that I ever wanted. I hope you know that, Sarah. It's just..." Chuck drew a deep, shaky breath. Even though he wasn't convinced she could hear him, he didn't want his voice to break. He needed to be strong, no matter how much he was crumbling inside. With a more even tone, he continued again. "It's just... I thought... how could I run away with you and leave everything and everyone behind knowing what I'd turn my back on? This thing in my head could help so many people. I thought I had a responsibility. It was you, Sarah. You taught me this. You taught me how being a spy is about something bigger. How we need to... put aside our own personal feelings for the greater good. I walked away from you in Prague so I could be something better for you. So I could live up to everything you taught me. You were my hero, Sarah. I did it..." Chuck sniffed. He voice was past the point of breaking now and he couldn't stop it. "I did it... because I love you, Sarah. I love you..."

Chuck blinked several times, trying to draw the moisture back into his eyes. Still squeezing her hand, he gazed at Sarah's ashen, sleeping face. In the few opportunities he had in the past few years, he realized he loved watching her sleep. When she slept, she seemed soft and at peace - something he rarely saw in her in wakefulness... but she didn't look peaceful now, she looked weak. It frightened him. Sarah's strength was one of the few sure things in his life and if that could falter, he didn't know if he could be sure of anything else.

"But it was all a waste, wasn't it? I really thought I could do it. I thought I could be a real spy. I knew I could be a real spy. I don't... I don't understand what went wrong. The flashes just wouldn't come." Chuck reached out and lightly touched Sarah's cheek. "I gave up our chance to be together for nothing, and look where you are now. If I had only said yes, you and I would have been together... somewhere safe with no guns. I hurt you and because of it, someone else hurt you too."

A tear glistened in the corner of Chuck's eye before it finally escaped and ran down his cheek. "I need you to get better, Sarah. And I need you to know how sorry I am. I'm sorry. And... that I love you. I love you, Sarah Walker. I love you."

Having run out of things to say, the impulse to kiss her suddenly seized Chuck's mind. He envisioned leaning over and touching his lips to hers. Her brilliant blue eyes would flutter open and she would smile at him softly, awakened by the kiss. She would be his very own Sleeping Beauty and he would be her prince. Everything would be fine and they could run off together into the sunset, living happily ever after, living the fairy tale that she asked him for six months ago.

… but the ventilator created an impenetrable barrier over her lips. Chuck delicately brushed several strands of Sarah's golden hair away from her face and placed a slow, gentle kiss on her forehead instead.

She didn't even stir.

Casey stood in the doorway of Sarah's hospital room with his arms folded across his chest. Zondra accompanied him, waiting just outside and leaning against the wall in a similar pose. Ellie and Devon lingered near by, but kept their distance from the two agents. Chuck remained inside, holding Sarah's hand and gently stroking her blond hair over and over, completely oblivious to the fact that Casey was watching him.

Finally Casey's patience wore thin and he stepped into the room. "Well, if it isn't the lemon. I thought I'd find you here." Casey paused for a moment, his eyes settling on Sarah's still form. He frowned, concern briefly washing over his face.

Chuck placed Sarah's hand back down on the bed and turned to face Casey. He gazed at Casey, but said nothing.

"Get up," Casey quietly commanded. "I need you at Castle."

Chuck glanced at Sarah, then tore his gaze away and looked back at Casey again. "I can't leave her, Casey. This is my fault. I need to be here."

Casey narrowed his blue eyes at Chuck, wondering just what exactly Chuck meant by claiming to be at fault. "She's going to keep sleeping whether or not you're here, Bartowski. If you want to help her, come do something useful. We don't have time to waste."

Chuck's shoulders sunk and he nodded. Glumly, he agreed. He knew Sarah would have wanted him to get to work. "I-I'm sorry. You're right." Chuck leaned forward, placing a final kiss on Sarah's hand before rising to his feet and following Casey out the door.

They exited Sarah's room together, meeting Ellie, Devon and Zondra outside. "We're borrowing your brother for awhile," Casey bluntly informed Ellie. She just nodded.

"W-wait, who's we?" Chuck stammered.

Casey grunted with impatience while Zondra rolled her eyes. "Bartowski," Casey said almost condescendingly. "This is Agent Rizzo. She's filling in for Walker while we clean this up. Let's go."

Chuck glanced to the side to see Zondra leaning against the wall. As soon as he caught sight of her face he could feel the familiar electric sensation of a flash overtake his brain.

… _a picture of a jumping tabby kitten..._

… _a CIA ID photo..._

… _a name, Zondra Rizzo..._

… _a grainy black and white surveillance video of Zondra and a young-looking Sarah Walker in a bar in Pyongyang..._

… _the kitten again..._

Chuck shuddered as the flash wore down. Zondra squinted at him, the seizure-like moment not lost on her. "Right, right," he said.

Casey turned to head down the hall with Chuck reluctantly following him. Zondra hesitated a moment, pausing at Sarah's door. She peered inside for a moment, the conflict in her dark eyes clear as day. After a moment, she turned away and hurried down the hall to catch up.

**xxx**

On the way from the Hospital to Castle, Casey drove and Zondra sat with him up front. Chuck was relegated to the back seat, fidgeting uncomfortably the entire ride. Finally he could stand the silence no more, "So uh... Agent Rizzo?"

She glanced over her shoulder, "What?"

"Do you uh... you know Sarah?"

"Why?"

"I uh... I thought that uh... I mean you're CIA and uh..." Chuck realized he was too tired actually come up with an appropriately witty response. Finally, he just glumly ended with, "Just making conversation? So, do you?"

Instead of answering, Zondra turned to Casey. "Your asset always ask this many questions?"

Casey merely grunted.

"Hey, I'm not just an asset anymore," Chuck protested.

"Not what I heard, lemon," Casey retorted. Chuck remained quiet for the rest of the car ride.

**xxx**

When they arrived at the Buy More plaza, the trio slipped into the Orange Orange, trying their best to avoid notice. Before entering the freezer to head downstairs, Casey remarked, "You better hope we get this sorted fast, Rizzo. Otherwise we're going to need to fit you for an apron."

Zondra looked around the vacant yogurt shop with a looking of dawning horror. "_This_ was her cover? Oh you've got to be kidding me."

Downstairs, Zondra began exploring Castle with curiosity while Casey immediately led Chuck to a table piled with stacks of files and intel on the Ring. "You want me to go through all of this?" Chuck asked dubiously. "So much for getting fired."

"Yep, and you can start with these two." Casey slapped two addition photos down on the table: Gilles and Javier Cruz.

Zondra reappeared, stopping beside Casey. "What's this guy do, exactly?"

"He's an analyst," Casey smirked. Zondra didn't look convinced.

Chuck focused on the photo of Cruz first and immediately shuddered into a flash.

… _a picture of a rowboat..._

… _a series of crime scene photos..._

… _a mugshot..._

… _a hit list..._

… _the rowboat again..._

"He's Javier Cruz!" Chuck suddenly blurted. "Assassin. He's an assassin!"

Both Zondra and Casey gave Chuck an unimpressed look. Zondra was the first to respond, "Tell us something we don't know."

Chuck frowned. His tone suddenly shifted to the morose again. "He's the guy who did it, isn't he?"

"Mmm hmm," was the only reply she gave.

"And he's dead now," Casey added.

Never a vengeful person by nature, Chuck couldn't deny feeling a bit of relief in knowing that the person responsible for hurting Sarah had already paid for his crimes. Still, he had to know. Glancing at Casey, he cautiously asked, "Did you do it?"

Casey shrugged. "The guy is Swiss cheese. Too many holes to know who gets credit for the kill shot."

Apparently no one in either the NSA or CIA took well to seeing their fellow agents fired upon, Chuck noted. "I'll just... get back to work."

Before disappearing back into the depths of Castle, Zondra offered one more point. "Cruz had to have known this was a suicide mission. He'd be an idiot to think he could open up on a whole room full of agents and make it out alive. These Ring guys must have had something big on him. Contract killers don't do suicide. They want to use that fat paycheck. Look into that."

Casey gave an impressed grunt. "Yeah. What she said." Zondra just smirked and walked off.

The hours passed slowly. Zondra disappeared after the first, presumably to return to the hospital. Casey spent most of the time on the phone or writing reports. A large order of Chinese food surfaced at some point, which was instantly devoured by the crowd of covert agents that seemed to appear out of nowhere, beckoned by the smell of fresh wantons. Chuck simply plowed through the piles of papers, vowing to find something. Typically, Chuck wouldn't enjoy an entire afternoon of pouring through piles of intel, but he was thankful to have something to distract him from the haunting image of Sarah hooked up to all of those machines, looking vulnerable and small. Sizzling shrimp could wait. He needed to prove himself again.

* * *

><p>Sarah Walker was dead. Then, she realized she was dreaming. Words of regret and love floated through the sea of blackness that consumed her, pushing the sounds of guns, sirens and chaos further and further away. <em>I love you<em>, _Sarah Walker. I love you._

Then, something clicked. There was a rush of air, five seconds and it clicked again. _Click... whoosh... click..._

Sarah Walker was wrong, she wasn't dead. She had also stopped dreaming. She heard something. Five seconds passed, another click. Sarah focused all of her consciousness on the sound of the clicks and rushing air, but she could feel her lucidity sliding away again, nearly lost to the slow, hypnotic rhythm of the clicking machinery. With a redoubled effort, she focused on orienting herself to her surroundings one sense at a time. She was alive.

The smell was clean, antiseptic and vaguely familiar. The coppery taste of blood in her mouth had been replaced by plastic and cottony dryness. Something soft supported her body, which felt heavy and leaden, save for the twisted mix of a cold, dull ache and two hot, sharp pains in her chest. Her head swam as she felt her entire body suddenly tilt backwards in a fit of vertigo. This all meant something and the answer seemed to be floating just at the edge of her brain, but she couldn't find it. Her own thoughts felt heavy and sluggish. Finally, a singular conclusion wormed its way into the forefront of her mind: _she had been drugged_.

She forced herself to think, despite the distracting pain in her chest. There were procedures an agent was supposed to follow upon waking up drugged in unfamiliar surroundings. However, the notion of recalling those was soon forgotten. Visceral fear obliterated Sarah's focus, a second horrible realization finding its way into her consciousness:_ she was choking._

A beeping alarm startled Devon out of sleep. He jumped to his feet, instantly awake and mentally chastising himself for nodding off in the first place. The monitor showed a sudden spike in Sarah's heart rate, the shrill beeping calling attention to it. He was not expecting the sight that greeted him. Sarah was awake and her blue eyes carried a wild look.

He rushed to her bedside and leaned into her field of vision. Sarah squinted, as if trying to force her eyes into focus. As the vision of his face began to take some cohesion in her eyes, a stray thought briefly interrupted her panic. _Awesome?_

"Hey, hey. Sarah," he said. Her eyes finally seemed to find their focus, but the fear and glassy appearance remained. "It's Devon. You're in the hospital. You're safe."

_Safe_. The word never registered in Sarah's mind. Her surprise at seeing Devon was quickly forgotten, the panic over choking rising again. She tried to speak, but quickly discovered that she couldn't. Her eyes broke from Devon's and began darting wildly around the room. Finally, she realized there was something on her face and she reached up to grab it.

"Whoa, hey now." Devon reached out and grabbed Sarah's hand before it could make contact with the mask holding the ventilator's tube in place. "Sarah, look at me." Sarah's eyes locked with Devon's again. A nurse scrambled into the room, reacting to the blaring alarms. She hesitated just inside the door, seeing Devon already tending to her patient. "You're safe, Sarah," her repeated, "but you've gotta relax. There's a tube in your throat. It's there to help you breathe. Don't try to fight it."

Sarah continued staring at Devon until his words managed to pierce the drug-addled fog in her brain and the pieces began falling together. _She was in the hospital. She was drugged because she was in the hospital. She was not choking_. The last thought was the hardest to accept. Despite what she as told, it still felt like she was.

"Just relax and let the machine do the work," Devon continued to soothe. Sarah began to gradually settle into the ventilator's rhythm, her heart slowing again as the panic-driven adrenaline began to subside. "Yeah. You're doing awesome, Sarah."

"Are we all right?" A woman's voice startled Sarah and she instinctively tried to turn to face the sound. Anxiety briefly flared within her at the notion that her senses were so dulled that she hadn't noticed the nurse enter the room.

Devon placed a firm hand on Sarah's shoulder. "Hey, don't try to move." Devon turned to the nurse. "She's okay. She just woke up and I think the vent freaked her out a bit."

The nurse approached Sarah's bed. "Hey, honey. How are you doing?"

Sarah reacted to the question the only way she could: by staring at her.

"Are you in any pain?"

Only then did Sarah remember how badly her chest hurt. Her head nearly immobilized by the ventilator, she only managed to give a slight nod.

"Okay. I'll get you something for that." The nurse started checking her charge over, making sure the various tubes and wires were still in place. Sarah tried her best to follow the nurse's progress, using it to take a mental inventory of her own body. Wariness seized Sarah as the nurse drew her attention to the tube embedded in her chest. A tube in her throat and a tube in her chest; she was immobile and helpless. Sarah then realized something else: she was still scared.

Satisfied that everything was still in order, the nurse gave Sarah a friendly smile, "You know, you weren't supposed to be waking up." Finally, she turned to Devon and spoke in a much lower tone, "I'm going to try to get her doctor back in here."

Devon merely nodded in agreement as the nurse turned to leave. Then, he looked back down at Sarah. "Your anesthesiologist was right," he breathed. "You _do_ have some crazy drug resistance. That's a little scary."

Pulling his chair right to the bedside, Devon sat down again and leaned in close. "I talked Ellie into going back home to get some sleep, and I guess everybody else had _work _to do, if you know what I mean."

Sarah nodded slightly. She knew something went horribly wrong. Nothing went that badly without fallout, which surely meant Casey and all of the other agents had better things to do than hold a vigil at her bedside.

"So it's just you and me, until your doctor gets back in here. He's the best thoracic surgeon we've got. He's awesome. You're in great hands. Do you remember what you were told in the recovery room?"

Sarah gave her head a tiny shake. The last thing she remembered was seeing Casey hovering over her as she lay on the cold, hard floor of El Bucho's dining room, with thoughts of Chuck and things unsaid haunting her last moments of consciousness.

With his voice barely above a whisper, Devon continued, "I guess your big spy mission went pretty badly. You were shot. The bullet broke a couple of your ribs and punctured your lung. A lot of other people were hurt too. But uh... I heard they got the guy that did it."

Sarah's eyes widened. A thousand questions were formulating in her mind, but she couldn't give voice to any of them. Amongst the most prominent, she wondered how she was still alive.

"You gave us all a huge scare, but you're gonna be okay," Devon added.

Sarah furrowed her brow, and briefly tested her hands. The left seemed to be entangled in what she assumed to be an IV and pulse monitor. Thankfully, the right was free. She lifted her right hand and made a writing motion at Devon. Understanding, Devon rummaged around in the drawers next to the bed until he found a notepad and pen. Sarah took them from Devon and found herself quickly dismayed. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy. Holding the pen seemed to be much more difficult than it should be, leaving her normally neat, feminine handwriting to take on the primitive quality one might expect of a child's.

C.

Seeing the first letter, Devon immediately said the first thing that came to mind. "Chuck?"

Sarah's eyes hardened and she continued writing. C-A-S.

"Casey? John Casey? You want to see him?"

Sarah nodded, letting the pen and paper drop with relief.

"He came in with you and stayed all night, he and that other one... she was kind of mean." Sarah briefly gave Devon a confused look, not knowing who he was referring to. "But,John had to go back to wherever you guys go. I'll bet it's a super awesome secret base, isn't it?" Devon briefly grinned. "I'll let him know."

In that moment, the nurse returned with a balding doctor in tow.

"Hello Miss..." the doctor hesitated. "There seems to be some dispute over whether you have a name or not."

The fog was slowly clearing from Sarah's mind, but the doctor's statement was enough cause for alarm to lift it further, but she still could not find the clarity to know what to do. Sarah turned her head slightly to look at Devon, who had gravitated back towards the doorway. He was a familiar face, but she managed to remember that he was the last person she should look to for cover management. She desperately wished Casey was there.

Suddenly a woman's voice piped in from just out in the hallway, "She doesn't!"

Another memory struggled to come forth. Sarah knew that she knew that voice, but she could not place it.

"... right then." The doctor continued. "I'm Dr. Elliot. I performed your surgery. I assume Dr. Woodcomb told you everything?"

Sarah had no idea what 'everything' meant, but she nodded anyway.

"I'm going to adjust your medication a bit so we can manage your pain and get you back to sleep. Okay?"

She still felt as if she were on the verge of suffocating, unable to believe that she was actually getting any air, and it felt like someone was stabbing her in the chest. Having been stabbed before, she could say that with some accuracy. Yet, she shook her head, her blue eyes darting back and forth between Devon and her own doctor with a pleading look. She had to talk to Casey. She had to know what happened. She didn't want to lose herself into the fog of drugs again, not yet.

Dr. Elliot glanced at the heart monitor beside the bed, noting Sarah's pulse was quickening. The nurse accompanying him chimed in, "Honey. It's important that you relax and get enough rest."

Sarah banged her hand against the bed's side rail, demanding Devon's attention again. Surely he would understand. Devon approached the bedside again, quickly putting his hand on Sarah's arm to still it. Sarah gazed at him desperately, then pointed at the beginnings of Casey's name on the discarded notepad resting beside her.

Devon glanced at his colleague before taking a seat next to Sarah again. The three medical professionals all exchanged a knowing look. He then leaned forward to whisper in Sarah's ear. "Okay, Sarah. You've gotta listen to me."

Sarah gave him a wary, sidelong glance.

"Chuck talks about you like you're some kind of superhero, so I know you're tough. You're awesome. But Chuck taught me that with what you guys do, there's a time to be awesome and time to be uh... be less awesome. You don't have to be so tough right now."

Sarah continued gazing at Devon. Her pulse slowed again. Just having his words to focus on helped her forget her unease about the vulnerability wrought by being immobile and the struggle to breathe.

"You had a thoracotomy, Sarah. I'm a cardiologist. I know chest incisions are mega painful. I also know how much having that tube in your throat sucks. You shouldn't have to feel all of this. Don't be tough."

Sarah pointed at the notepad again.

"I'm going to call John. I promise. Just let us give you a little something to keep you comfortable until he gets here. C'mon, Sarah."

Sarah lay still, staring at Devon. The room went silent save for the click and hiss of the ventilator. Finally, Sarah nodded. The tension seemed to immediately flee the room. Within moments, Dr. Eliot gave the nurse instructions which she followed by pushing an injection through Sarah's IV.

They soon left, leaving Devon alone with Sarah again. Sarah could feel the fog settling around her brain and her eyelids turning heavy. Within minutes, she found herself sliding into the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, with only the repeated mental recitation of CIA protocols and mandates keeping her from fading away entirely.

Devon slipped out of Sarah's room for a moment, finding Zondra still at her post outside. Firing off a text message at the same time, he absently spoke to her. "This kind of thing must be tough on you spies," Devon suddenly coughed, "...you guys. I mean you guys."

Zondra gave Devon a disinterested look.

"She's uh, she's kind of freaking out. I'm calling John... but if she wakes up again, maybe you could go in there. It might help?"

Zondra just shook her head. "Trust me. It would only make it worse."

* * *

><p><em>Sarah's awake. Asking 4 u.<em>

Casey remembered staring at the text message from Devon for a moment, trying to decide if he could slip out of Castle while leaving Chuck behind. The subtext was there, Sarah was asking for him and not for Chuck. Believing the notion of a clean escape to be impossible, he bluntly informed Chuck that they were returning to the hospital. Chuck didn't need to be told twice. Matters took a more challenging turn when they arrived. The first barrier was a nurse.

She halted the pair of men in the middle of the waiting room before they could pass through the doors into the ICU hallway. "I know you're both here to see our mysterious nameless patient. It's bad enough that we've got extra security disrupting the ward, but the rules are the rules. They're in place for her own good. One of you at a time, boys."

"You, sit," Casey ordered Chuck, physically turning him and pointing him at a nearby chair.

"What am I, now? Your dog?"

Casey gave Chuck a grim, impatient look giving Chuck no doubt of his seriousness. "Look, Bartowski. I don't know what happened between you and Walker. But I do know that after she came back from wherever the hell she went, I couldn't even say your name without her going ice cold. Old-style, if you know what I mean." Chuck shook his head. Casey didn't bother to elaborate. "That is a woman scorned if I've ever seen one, and I don't think she knows you're here. I also don't think she's in any shape to appreciate a surprise, especially if it's your smiling face."

Chuck deflated. The nurse merely watched. Casey continued. "She asked to see me. So I'm gonna go in there and see what she wants. And, if she wants to see you after, I'll let you know. Got it?"

Nodding glumly, Chuck fell into the chair Casey pointed him at. Inside, he thought Casey might almost be right. He didn't exactly have the right to march in there, not anymore. He made his choice.

The nurse led Casey through the doors and into the ward's hallway. Zondra sat outside of Sarah's room, waiting like a sentry. As soon as she spotted Casey, she stood to return to the waiting area. He nodded both to her and a particularly-attentive "orderly" before passing through the door into Sarah's room. He paused once he entered. He watched Sarah for a moment. She seemed to be sleeping, her chest rising and falling lightly with the rhythm of the ventilator. Part of him wanted to leave her be. He could turn around and return to Castle, and she would never be the wiser. Another part of him remembered one of the many reasons he previously preferred to work alone, even if he would never admit it to himself. When you're alone, you don't have to feel the worry he was feeling at that moment. The last part of him reminded himself that she was his partner, the best he ever had. Remembering that, he stepped forward and quietly spoke her name. "Walker?"

She didn't stir. He stepped forward again. He hesitated for a moment, realizing they rarely crossed the line of physical contact outside of sparring, then lightly shook her forearm. "Sarah?"

Sarah flinched slightly, then slowly opened her eyes. Upon seeing Casey standing over her, relief flooded her body, momentarily pushing aside the chest pains that wakefulness brought. In that instant, she forgot she couldn't speak. She only meant to greet her partner. Instead, the choking sensation that never quite went away overtook her again. Casey frowned at Sarah's resulting spasm and grimace, not quite understanding what he just witnessed. Doing the only thing that he could think of, he stood up straight again, defensively folding his arms over his chest. "You okay?"

Sarah nodded slightly, though Casey couldn't fail to notice that her waking fit left her abnormally dull eyes watering. Helpless to offer anything, he just asked, "I'm here. What do you need?"

Sarah's eyes broke from Casey's and began searching her room. She finally spied her notepad on top of the readout monitor beside her bed. Casey followed her gaze and grabbed the paper, offering it to her. She stared at the paper, wishing that she hadn't allowed Devon to talk her into another round of painkillers. They left a thick, lingering haze in her mind, and the pain was still there anyway. Finally, she scrawled the only thing she could think of on the paper: a single question mark.

Casey took the notepad back from Sarah and couldn't help but to offer a mirthless chuckle when he saw it. "Guess that sums up everything," he remarked. He turned around and closed the door, using the moment to organize his own thoughts. "It's been about eighteen hours and we haven't learned anything. Cruz and Gilles are dead and all the intel went with them. The only source we have left is one of Gilles' thugs and he's turning out useless. Beckman thinks we have a mole somewhere up on the chain of command and I think she's right, but we're still chasing our tails right now."

Sarah gazed at Casey helplessly. The rational part of her brain that still functioned despite the narcotics told her to be concerned, though it was still a struggle to grasp the entirety of the situation. It was the morphine. She hated morphine. It may have taken away the pain, but it also took away her sensitivities. Nothing seemed as bad as it she knew it should. She lifted up the notepad again, but only stared at it, unable to find the right question to ask. Somehow managing a sigh, she put it down again without writing a word.

Casey seemed to understand, "I don't have any answers to give you anyway."

Sarah gave a faint nod.

"And there's no point making yourself crazy over it. It's not your problem right now. Beckman has Zondra Rizzo covering for you."

If her intubation didn't prevent it, Sarah would have frowned the moment Zondra's name graced her ears. Casey caught the hardened look in her eyes, however.

"Yeah, I know there's some bad blood between you two. She doesn't want to be here any more than you want her to be. I wasn't exactly happy to see her either." That wasn't an understatement. After a pair of run-ins earlier in the decade, ending with Casey's own disastrous "Prague incident," Casey was left with a quartet of young, cocky CIA skirts he'd give his left arm to never have to deal with again. Much to his chagrin, Zondra's sudden appearance in his life made for three out of the four since the Burbank operation began. The irony in the fact that his valued partner was the first of them was not lost on him either. "But she knows you and we needed that. She helped me help you. She's getting stuff done. You can't be picky now."

The look in Sarah's eyes conveyed that she was not convinced.

"Could be worse," Casey offered with a smirk. "At least Miller and _Bubbles_ aren't here too. That would be the last thing I need."

Before Sarah's glassy-eyed blue glare could intensify any further, Casey abruptly changed the subject. The edge of humor left his tone, replaced by something oddly gentle. "Look. There's something else you need to know."

Casey took a deep breath. Sarah looked at him, worry now radiating out of her eyes.

"Beckman gave Bartowski the pink slip. I guess he's proven himself a lemon and the timing couldn't be worse. She canceled the rest of his training and put him on the first flight back to US soil. He arrived this morning."

Sarah's eyes slowly went wide. She could feel a new pain in her chest that she was sure wasn't from her wounds. Everything within her seized at the thought. The numbers on her pulse monitor started slowly climbing. _60... 65... 70... 75..._

Casey continued, "He knows what happened and he knows you're here. There wasn't any hiding that, not with you at this hospital."

… _80... 85..._

"He was in here earlier before I could stop him, but you were dead to the world anyway. He wants to see you now."

… _90..._

Sarah could feel her heart starting to race, mindful that her breathing refused to leave its mechanically-enforced pace. It was an odd sensation. _Chuck came home._ She could feel a whole gamut of emotions bubbling up uncontrollably. Desperately, she tried to find her cool calm and push them all aside. Six months ago, she vowed to harden her heart again. Once broken was one time too many. Why couldn't she now? Immediately, she blamed the drugs. Morphine, sedatives, helplessness... it all left her feeling like her mind wasn't her own. Despite the mild narcotic euphoria, she managed to find fear above everything else she felt. She knew what would happen. He would rush in with his heart on his sleeve and she would be in the worst position possible: one where she couldn't speak for herself.

… _95..._

Fear turned to panic. She wasn't ready for him. She couldn't face him, not now, not like this, not unable to say what she needed to. She shook her head quickly. The sudden movement in her neck brought the choking sensation back, causing her eyes to start watering again. In that moment, her heart monitor began beeping as her pulse approached the triple digits.

Casey immediately stepped forward and grabbed Sarah's right wrist. He squeezed it, pushing her forearm firmly against the bed. "Hey, Walker. Calm down." Sarah locked her watering eyes with his. The firm grasp on her arm gave her a new, safe sensation to focus on and she could feel the panic waning.

… _90... 85..._

The door suddenly swung open and Sarah's ICU nurse rushed into the room, reacting to the beeping alarm. "What's going on in here?"

The nurse rushed to the other side of the bed, opposite Casey. Sarah suddenly felt very crowded. "Just a little bad news. We're okay," Casey offered, immediately switching from his agent voice to his civilian cover voice.

Unconvinced, the nurse looked down at Sarah, "How are you feeling, honey? Doing all right?" Sarah just nodded and her heart kept slowing. The nurse frowned at Casey, "Why don't you try to wrap it up here, all right? She needs to get her rest. Bad news can wait."

Casey nodded gravely to the nurse. The nurse exited the room again, with a vow to return shortly.

"She's right, this can all wait. Don't get yourself all messed up over Bartowski. He's staying out of your hair." Somehow, Casey's tone became uncharacteristically gentle again. "You're off the clock now, Walker. Stop worrying about all of this. Just get some rest."

Sarah gazed silently at Casey, suddenly feeling very tired. She nodded faintly, blinking her eyes to force any moisture back from escaping.

The nurse entered the room again, carrying a fresh IV bag. She walked back up to the bed, reaching across to touch Sarah's hand. "Ready to stop being stubborn now?"

Sarah gave her a slight nod, her eyes red, but no longer watering.

"Good. You'll feel better if you just get some sleep." The nurse hung the new IV bag and set it to a slow drip. Within moments, Sarah's eyes closed again. Casey lingered by her bedside until he was certain she was out. He gave the nurse a nod, then quietly slipped out to let her tend to her patient.

**xxx**

Casey entered the ICU waiting area from the hallway leading into the ward. Chuck waited nervously, tapping his foot and scarcely ever taking his eyes off of the the doors. Yet somehow, Zondra spotted Casey's re-entry first. She raised her eyebrows in interest, causing Chuck to jump to his feet the moment he noticed. Chuck rushed to the door, finding himself totally unprepared when Casey physically blocked him from passing through. "What the hell, Casey?"

"We're going back to Castle. You can see her later," Casey said in the calmest, most even tone he could muster.

"Wha-why? Casey? I need to go see her... I need to..."

"Bartowski!" Casey hissed.

Taking interest in the standoff, Zondra finally stood up and slowly wandered closer, watching with curiosity.

"She's out cold again," Casey growled, not relinquishing his grip on Chuck's shirt. "And she doesn't want to be bothered anymore. So you're going to leave her alone. Got it?"

Chuck paused for a moment before his face took on an expression of firm defiance. "I'm staying."

Casey immediately shifted his posture into a stance of intimidation, staring Chuck down, he growled, "You listen to me and you listen good. Normally, picking sides in the lady feelings bullshit between you and her is the last thing I want to do... but she got shot and so tonight, she wins. She doesn't want to see you right now, so you aren't going in there. Clear?"

Chuck's defiant expression crumbled, but Casey kept talking, "And this is the kind of crap that probably got you that pink slip from Beckman. You want to be the lovesick boy toy? Stay here. You want to be a spy? You have to act like one. That means when there's work to do, we go do it. So what are you going to do? Help us catch the guys who put a bunch of agents in the hospital? Or sit in this waiting room by yourself all night?"

With that final question, Casey released his hold on Chuck. Chuck stood entirely still for a moment before the tension he'd gathered in the past few moments deflated. With an odd mix of resignation and resolution in his tone, he agreed. "I'll go back to Castle." _I'll be a spy for Sarah._

* * *

><p><strong>Secret Location, Somewhere in Los Angeles, CA<strong>

"_... yes Director, I think the message was clearly received."_

_A dark-haired man sat behind his desk in a dimly-lit office. He held a peculiar, circular cell phone to his ear as he sat deep in conversation with the person on the other end of the phone._

"_... hopefully the combined forces of the DNI will think twice before attempting to interfere in another one of our operations. Nothing indicates that Gilles was willingly betraying us, but he fell into their trap and that wasn't going to be tolerated."_

"_He's confirmed dead?"_

"_Dead."_

"_And Cruz?"_

"_Too dead to talk. Killed on the scene, as expected, Director," the dark-haired man confirmed. "We did pick up some interesting intel, however."_

"_Do tell?"_

"_We expected Sarah Walker to be on the scene. We knew she was still in LA and she had been working Gilles over for weeks. However, NSA's John Casey was sighted at El Bucho too."_

"_Meaning what?"_

"_Intel we inherited from Fulcrum indicated that Walker and Casey had been working jointly in LA to protect a civilian for unknown reasons. The Roarke debacle indicated those two had ties to the Intersect project as well. Their LA Operation seemed to go silent post-Roarke and the Fulcrum collapse. We assumed they had moved on. Different agencies. Those two would only continue working together if they were on the same operation, else I'm sure they'd both be on the wind. If they're both still in LA and still working together, this indicates that our Intersect leads might not be as dead as we thought."_

"_What's their status now?"_

"_Walker was most certainly injured at El Bucho, possibly killed. So far as we know, John Casey wasn't harmed."_

"_Interesting. Find Colonel Casey. Let's see if those rumors that this team was protecting a human intersect are true after all. If they are, take it alive... no witnesses."_

_To be continued..._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note #3: <strong>That chapter turned out pretty long, huh? Fear not, chapter five will give us a return to some action. What do you have to look forward to? Helicopters and snipers, possibly not in that order. Oh yeah, and maybe the plot.


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